is  ir 


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AS    IT   IS    IN    HEAVEN 


LUCY  LARCOM 


BOSTON    AND    NEW    YORK 

HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN   AND   COMPANY 

(3Efce  Rrt)et?"rt>e  JJrrp's,  Cambridge 

1891 


L3 


Copyright,  1891, 
By  LUCY  LARCOM. 

All  rights  reserved. 


The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 
Electrotyped  and  Printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  &  Co. 


To  P.  F. 

THB   INSPIRING   TEACHER    AND   FRIEND 

OF  MY  EARLY  WOMANHOOD 

THIS  LITTLE  BOOK  IS  DEDICATED  BY 

HER  GRATEFUL  PUPIL 


PREFACE 


E  all  have  our  intimate  books,  as 
we  have  our  intimate  friends.  They 
are  not  always  the  greatest  or  the 
wisest  that  we  know,  but  we  like  them  to 
think  and  talk  with,  or  to  be  silent  with  ;  to 
have  near  us,  simply  because  they  are  they, 
and  we  are  ourselves.  This  one  will  be 
little  to  any  reader,  unless  it  is  admitted 
to  the  close  intimacy  and  seclusion  of 
thoughtful  hours.  It  dares  to  touch  high 
themes,  —  as  a  friend  may,  when,  alone  with 
friend,  conversation  deepens  into  commun- 
ion. 

Extracts  of  some  length  are  introduced, 
as  persons  conversing  might  draw  other 
and  wiser  persons  into  their  conference, 
leaving  them  full  freedom  of  speech.  Three 
authors  most  largely  quoted  are  E.  H.  Sears, 


vi  Preface 

J.  H.  Thorn,  and  George  MacDonald.  Other 
writers  as  well  known  appear  in  an  occa- 
sional paragraph  ;  and  familiar  poets  here 
and  there  give  clearness  and  emphasis  to  a 
thought  that  was  striving  for  expression. 

The  intention  of  the  book  is  spiritual 
rather  than  literary.  Heaven  is  written  of, 
—  the  character  of  the  heavenly  life  rather 
than  its  conjectured  conditions  ;  the  heaven 
that  enters  into  our  human  relations  to 
purify  them  and  prepare  them  for  a  higher 
development ;  the  heaven  that  is  to  be 
lived  on  earth,  making  whatever  glorious 
life  we  may  pass  into  hereafter  both  dear 
and  familiar  ;  so  that 

"  When  Time's  veil  shall  fall  asunder, 

The  soul  may  know 

No  fearful  change,  nor  sudden  wonder, 

Nor  sink  the  weight  of  mystery  under  ; 

But  with  the  upward  rise,  and  with  the  vastness  grow." 


f 


CONTENTS 

Page 

I.    Our  Father  and  His  Family 9 

//.    The  Heaven  that  Is 19 

III.  Blending  Atmospheres 29 

IV.  A  Transparent  World 40 

V.    The  Human  Mirror 5' 

VI.    The  Blessed  Need 64 

VII.   All  Things  are  Yours 77 

VIII.    The  Threefold  Cord 89 

IX.   Bridegroom  and  Bride 106 

X.    Forever  Young 116 

XI.    An  Endless  Life 130 

XII.    The  Joy  of  our  Lord 142 


AS    IT   IS    IN   HEAVEN 


Our  Father  and  His  Family. 

UR  Father."  Until  we  feel  the 
meaning  of  these  two  simple  words, 
we  can  have  no  true  perception  of 
what  heaven  is.  That  little  pronoun  "  our  " 
is  the  key  to  all  blessedness,  above  and  be- 
low. It  unlocks  the  door  of  every  human 
heart  for  the  admission  of  every  other 
member  of  the  great  family  of  humanity. 
We  leave  our  egotism  and  isolation  and 
selfishness  behind  us  whenever  we  sin- 
cerely utter  these  first  words  of  our  Lord's 
prayer. 

"He  setteth  the  solitary  in  families." 
The  human  father  is  given  to  us  as  a  dim 
revelation  of  the  heavenly  one.     The  baby 


10  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

catches  its  earliest  glimpse  of  heaven 
through  the  blended  look  of  tenderness  in 
its  father's  and  mother's  eyes,  and  the 
children  grow  up  together,  bound  to  each 
other  and  to  their  parents  by  ties  of  love 
and  obedience  that  foreshadow  their  deep- 
er relations  to  their  fellow-beings  and  to 
God.  For  love  of  the  Best  and  obedience 
to  the  Highest  are  essential  to  the  exist- 
ence of  heaven.  God  cannot  make  a  dwell- 
ing-place for  Himself  where  these  are  not. 
"  Our  Father  who  art  in  heaven.'1 
If  heaven  were  a  region  which  could  be 
mapped  out  by  definite  descriptions  and 
geographical  boundaries,  it  would  no  longer 
be  heaven  to  us,  but  only  another  earth. 
The  sky  above  us  symbolizes  heaven  be- 
cause of  its  limitlessness.  The  mind  re- 
fuses to  think  of  the  starry  spaces  as 
bounded.  We  cannot  believe  that  in  ex- 
ploring them  we  may  at  last  come  to  a 
wall  which  shuts  the  universe  in  upon  it- 
self. The  infinite  is  more  comprehensible 
to  us  than  the  finite.     The  habitation  of 


Our  Father  and  His  Family  11 

God  must  be  everywhere.  But  it  is  a 
spiritual  habitation,  which  we  can  enter 
only  as  spiritual  beings. 

What  "place"  may  signify  to  us  when 
we  shall  have  ceased  to  inhabit  our  mortal 
bodies,  we  cannot  guess  ;  but  if  there  be 
any  meaning  in  the  term  which  the  Apos- 
tle Paul  so  distinctly  uses  —  "a  spiritual 
body "  —  spirit  and  form  can  never  be 
separated  from  each  other ;  their  union  is 
sacred  and  eternal.  It  was  not  mere  sen- 
timent, but  the  utterance  of  tenderest  hu- 
man sympathy  and  divinest  knowledge,  — 
the  assurance  of  Jesus  to  his  sorrowing 
disciples,  "  I  go  to  prepare  a  place  for  you  : 
that  where  I  am,  there  ye  may  be  also." 
He  bade  his  friends  still  to  send  up  their 
hearts'  wishes  to  Him,  after  He  should 
have  gone  out  of  their  sight. 

Prayer  is  the  door  forever  open  between 
earth  and  heaven.  Sooner  than  sound  can 
reach  a  human  ear  through  this  lower  at- 
mosphere, the  longing  desire  of  the  spirit 
rises  to  the  heart  of  the  Eternal  Friend. 


12  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

Before  the  petition  has  found  shape  in 
words,  the  Parent-Soul  has  heard  and  an- 
swered His  offspring-soul.  Whether  we 
believe  it  or  not,  we  are  living  in  an  invisi- 
ble world,  where  our  wishes  are  understood 
before  our  words  are  spoken. 

In  our  hurried  repetitions  of  the  Lord's 
Prayer,  we  forget  what  promises  of  our 
own  are  involved  in  the  intensely  human 
requests  we  are  making  in  its  three  open- 
ing clauses,  and  how  closely  they  all  are 
interblended  with  that  first  thought  of  Our 
Father,  and  of  ourselves  as  His  children. 
We  sometimes  repeat  the  words  as  if  we 
were  asking  God  to  do  something  for  us 
without  our  cooperation,  even  though  they 
so  plainly  announce  duties  that  we  sol- 
emnly bind  ourselves  to  perform. 

It  is  but  mockery  to  say  "  Hallowed  be 
Thy  Name ! "  while  we  are  treating  any 
child  of  His  with  indifference  or  contempt ; 
for  the  Name  of  God  is  also  the  name  of 
our  common  humanity.  In  heaven  the 
name  is  no  arbitrary  appendage  ;  it  is  the 


Our  Father  and  His  Family  i} 

Person,  the  Being.  To  hallow  God's  name 
is  not  merely  to  repeat  it  with  reverence : 
it  is  to  recognize  His  lineaments  and  to 
honor  Himself  in  every  one  of  our  breth- 
ren ;  or  if  in  any  H*ls  image  seems  lost  or 
obscured,  to  pray  and  strive  with  them  to 
have  it  restored. 

Nor  are  we  sincere  in  saying,  "  Thy 
Kingdom  come  !  "  while  we  are  living  only 
for  our  own  pleasure,  in  selfish  indifference 
to  the  welfare  of  others.  On  the  lips  of 
Christ  this  was  no  listless,  half-hearted 
wish.  He  tells  us  that  "the  Kingdom  of 
heaven  suffereth  violence  ;  "  that  our  ut- 
most energy  of  body  and  soul,  our  most 
eager  and  unwearying  activity  must  be 
given  to  hasten  its  coming.  If  we  can  look 
on  idly  while  injustice  and  oppression  and 
greed  of  gain  are  crushing  human  lives 
around  us,  —  if  we  are  taking  to  ourselves 
more  than  our  fair  share  of  the  means  by 
which  all  were  intended  to  find  their 
healthful  and  natural  development,  —  if 
we  are  unwilling:  to  sacrifice  our  own  small 


14  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

interests  to  the  larger  good  of  the  children 
of  the  Kingdom,  our  hearts  are  false  to  the 
words  of  our  prayer. 

We  say  "  Thy  will  be  done  !  "  sometimes 
with  almost  abject  submission  ;  but  it  is 
rather  a  prayer  of  earnest  and  fervent  con- 
secration. We  do  not  really  wish  that  the 
will  of  God  may  be  done,  unless  we  intend 
to  do  it  with  heart  and  soul  and  mind  and 
strength  ;  —  even  as  Christ  entered  the 
world  saying  with  every  throb  of  his  being, 
"Lo!  I  come  to  do  thy  will,  O  God!" 
Thus  only  can  the  will  of  God  be  done  on 
earth  as  it  is  in  heaven. 

And  so,  when  we  utter  this  heaven- 
breathing  prelude  to  the  more  personal  re- 
quests that  follow,  —  if  we  have  indeed  re- 
ceived the  Spirit  of  Him  who  is  the  Voice 
of  our  universal  humanity,  —  we  are  say- 
ing that  with  Him  we  do  hallow  the  Name 
of  God  in  our  thoughts  and  actions ;  that 
within  our  souls  His  Kingdom  of  love  and 
righteousness  is  begun  ;  that  we  are  doing 
His  will  from  the  heart,  as  the  one  joy  of 
our  lives. 


Our  Father  and  His  Family         15 

We  know  little  of  the  angels,  yet  we  do 
know  that  these  petitions  which  Our  Lord 
taught  us  must  also  be  in  their  hearts  and 
upon  their  lips  as  they  look  down  upon  us 
and  are  perplexed  by  "the  riddle  of  the 
painful  earth."  With  what  patient,  pitying 
wonder  must  those  who  have  never  known 
anything  but  the  love  and  obedience  of 
heaven  lean  earthward,  longing  to  pierce 
our  darkness  with  their  light !  Let  us  com- 
fort ourselves  with  the  thought  that  some- 
where there  are  beings  living  so  close  to 
their  Father's  heart  that  they  have  no  wish 
apart  from  Him,  and  are  always  faithfully 
and  successfully  doing  His  will.  What  we 
are  attempting  with  weary  struggles,  with 
falterings  and  failures,  they  are  steadily 
bringing  to  pass. 

Imagine  for  a  moment  what  it  would  be 
for  us  to  obey  God  without  the  least  refer- 
ence to  self,  —  without  our  usual  small  sat- 
isfactions with  our  own  methods,  and  our 
petty  measurements  of  the  methods  of 
others,  —  without    our  mean    craving  for 


1 6  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

approbation  or  reward,  —  without  our 
mockery  of  humility,  our  belittling  vanity 
and  pride,  —  without  our  hesitating  cow- 
ardice and  our  headstrong  rashness,  —  but 
simply,  spontaneously,  unreservedly  follow- 
ing His  impulses  within  us,  and  going 
forth  on  His  errands  as  if  there  were  no 
joy  for  us  in  doing  anything  else  than  this. 
How  fresh  and  free,  how  wholesome  and 
glad  the  vision  that  opens  before  us,  of 
those  who  have  escaped  from  the  thralldom 
of  their  own  will,  and  are  released  into  the 
liberty  of  the  sons  of  God !  What  inspi- 
ration for  us,  to  know  that  we  may  learn  to 
do  His  will  on  earth,  even  as  it  is  done  by 
the  child-hearted,  obedient  angels  ! 

Separate  thoughts,  hopes,  plans,  ideas 
peculiar  to  themselves  they  must  have,  else 
were  they  not  their  Father's  children,  each 
a  distinct  and  unique  expression  of  His 
life,  and  each  meant  to  fill  a  place  for 
which  no  other  being  in  His  universe  is 
fitted.  But  among  them  no  impulse  needs 
to  be  stifled,  no  purpose  changed :  God- 


Our  Father  and  His  Family  ly 

born,  each  thought  and  feeling  takes  at 
once  harmonious  shape,  and  becomes  a 
full,  clear  note  in  the  perfect  hymn  of  the 
spiritual  creation. 

These  are  our  heavenly  neighbors.  We 
cannot  see  how  close  they  sometimes  pitch 
their  tents  beside  our  earthly  tabernacles. 
We  feel  their  eyes  upon  us,  but  we  are 
less  acquainted  with  them  than  the  earth 
is  with  her  surrounding  stars.  One  hu- 
man life,  however,  has  been  lived  in  their 
companionship  ;  Jesus  Christ  could  speak 
of  himself  as  "  the  Son  of  man,  which  is  in 
heaven."  He  was  in  conscious  union  with 
these  his  invisible  brethren,  and  some- 
times the  clouds  were  swept  apart,  and 
voices  were  heard,  and  faces  were  seen 
out  of  the  inner  glory,  and  words  of  that 
high  communion  of  work  and  worship  fell 
upon  mortal  ears,  and  sank  into  human 
hearts  that  only  faintly  comprehended 
their  meaning. 

To  us  also  come  transfiguration-mo- 
ments.    They  are  rare ;  they  are  too  daz- 


1 8  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

zling  to  be  constantly  borne  by  our  weak 
vision ;  but  they  are  the  true  illumination 
of  our  lives.  Their  light  is  left  in  our  souls 
that  we  may  see  to  work  more  faithfully, 
knowing  that  we  toil  not  alone,  knowing 
that  the  eyes  of  our  freer  fellow-servants 
are  upon  us,  that  their  hands  are  helping 
us,  and  that  the  lowliest  service  which  we 
heartily  render  to  the  least  of  God's  chil- 
dren here,  is  one  with  the  lofty  enterprises 
which  occupy  the  energies  of  these  holy 
beings,  within  His  invisible  Kingdom  of 
Light  and  Love. 

They  bend  toward  us,  in  sympathy  with 
our  little  conflicts  and  sacrifices,  even  as 
their  souls  were  stirred  toward  our  Mas- 
ter, in  wonder  at  the  approaching  accom- 
plishment of  His  glorious  mission  to  man- 
kind. And  while  He  weaves  our  humble 
work  into  His,  our  hearts  acknowledge 
Him  as  the  Centre  of  all  aspiration  and 
endeavor :  we  find  in  Him  the  key  to  our 
largest,  holiest  relationships,  —  "Our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ,  of  whom  the  whole  family  in 
heaven  and  earth  is  named." 


II. 

The  Heaven  that  Is. 


S  it  is  in  heaven."  The  words  slip 
thoughtlessly  from  our  lips  :  as 
our  Lord  spoke  them,  they  gave  a 
diviner  meaning  to  the  whole  of  His  per- 
fect prayer.  They  are  the  atmosphere  in 
which  every  one  of  its  beautiful,  familiar 
petitions  blooms  like  a  separate  flower. 
The  fragrance  of  His  native  air,  the  climate 
of  heaven  in  which  His  soul  was  breathing 
while  He  walked  in  a  visible  form  upon  the 
earth,  suffused  whatever  wish  or  thought 
He  had  for  the  world  He  loved  ;  and 
through  this  pervasive  sweetness,  ever 
since  its  first  utterance,  the  Lord's  prayer 
has  held  its  place  in  human  hearts  as  the 
universal  prayer.  When  his  friends  asked 
Him  what  they  should  pray  for, —  the  most 
natural  answer,  the  only  answer  He  could 


20  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

give  them  was,  "  Pray  that  earth  may  be 
like  heaven." 

It  was  as  if  He  said,  "  Love  my  Father 
as  our  Father,  —  hallowing  His  Name  in 
the  lowliest  of  His  Children  as  in  Me,  and 
doing  His  will  in  all  things,  little  and  great, 
and  you  will  know  what  heaven  is,  for  you 
will  be  living  in  it  with  me.  His  Kingdom 
will  then  have  come  on  earth  as  it  is  in 
heaven."  It  is  like  a  traveler  from  an  en- 
lightened nation  visiting  some  outcast  col- 
ony of  his  countrymen  who  had  become 
degraded  by  yielding  through  long  genera- 
tions to  savage  habits,  arousing  them  to 
shame  at  their  brutish  condition  by  telling 
them  of  the  beautiful  home-life  they  had 
forgotten,  and  so  reviving  in  them  the  wish 
to  cultivate  its  dear,  forsaken  humanities, 
even  in  exile. 

For  earth  is  nothing  in  itself ;  it  is  alive 
only  through  heaven,  —  the  heaven  from 
which  it  can  no  more  be  separated  than 
the  human  body  can  exist  apart  from  the 
breath  of  life  which  God  has  breathed  into 


The  Heaven  that  Is  21 

it,  or  than  this  glad,  fruitful  world  could 
be  a  home  for  growing  organisms  without 
the  encircling  air  by  whose  mysterious 
movements  it  is  penetrated  and  sustained. 
As  dead  and  dreary  as  a  planet  without  an 
atmosphere  is  the  life  that  knows  itself 
only  in  its  externals,  in  its  relations  to 
things  alone,  without  the  spirit  through 
which  they  unfold  into  realities.  It  is  al- 
most sadder  than  to  have  no  life  at  all,  to 
live  as  if  the  outside  of  it  were  the  whole. 
It  is  dreadful  to  breathe  God's  breath,  and 
not  become  by  it  a  living  soul. 

Heaven  is.  Around  us  all  things  are 
wavering,  sinking  into  illusion  and  decay. 
We  want  to  stand  on  firm  ground.  Heart 
and  soul  and  flesh  cry  out  for  the  living 
God  —  for  that  which  is  permanent  and 
real.  We  cleave  to  the  Name  by  which 
God  revealed  Himself  to  His  ancient  peo- 
ple—  "I  Am"  —  as  the  Name  wherein 
our  own  immortality  is  hidden.  We  are 
unsatisfied  until  we  can  find  the  /  am  in 
ourselves,  —  in  our  human  life,  throughout 


22  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

all  its  associations  and  experiences.  God 
—  Life  —  Heaven  —  these  are  no  deceits 
of  the  senses.  In  our  soul  of  souls  we  are 
sure  that  they  are  "  the  things  that  cannot 
be  shaken." 

We  are  both  spirit  and  form,  and  we  can 
only  become  acquainted  with  spirit  through 
form,  with  the  invisible  through  the  visi- 
ble. And  around  us  the  spiritual  is  every- 
where trying  to  express  itself  through  what 
we  call  the  natural.  If  we  knew  how  to 
look  for  it,  we  should  everywhere  find  the 
heavenly  hidden  in  earthly  things.  It  has 
been  wisely  written,  that  "  no  man  ever 
conceived  of  spirit  without  form,  or  of  any- 
thing without  form,  for  the  simple  reason 
that  no  one  has  the  power  of  suspending 
the  laws  of  thought.  Form  and  substance 
are  co-essentials  of  each  other.  As  they 
cannot  be  separated  in  the  nature  of 
things,  so  it  is  not  in  the  power  of  any 
one  to  separate  them  in  his  idea." 

Living  in  the  human  form,  and  in  a 
world  of  forms  not  unrelated  to  ours,  it  is 


The  Heaven  that  Is  25 

the  one  quest  for  us  all,  to  find  not  only 
their  relations  to  us  and  to  each  other,  but 
also  to  make  our  way  through  them  to  the 
substance  within  and  beyond  them,  to  that 
through  which  alone  they  have  reality. 
To  comprehend  spirit  and  form  in  their 
eternal  harmony,  —  to  live  in  their  true 
relations  to  each  other,  is  to  have  won  the 
secret  of  Life. 

This  thought  is  not  fanciful,  but  most 
practical.  We  can  do  nothing  well,  with- 
out a  recognition  of  the  inseparable  union 
of  form  and  spirit.  In  it  lies  the  secret  of 
all  right  expression.     A  poet  has  said  — 

"Natural  things 
And  spiritual,  —  who  separates  these  two 
In  art,  in  morals,  or  the  social  drift, 
Tears  up  the  bonds  of  nature  and  brings  death. 

"  Without  the  spiritual 
The  natural 's  impossible  ;  —  no  form, 
No  motion  !     Without  sensuous,  spiritual 
Is  inappreciable  ;  —  no  beauty  or  power ! 
And  in  this  twofold  sphere  the  twofold  man 
Holds  firmly  by  the  natural,  to  reach 
The  spiritual  beyond  it,  —  fixes  still 
The  type  with  mortal  vision,  to  pierce  through 


24  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

With  eyes  immortal  to  the  antetype 
Some  call  the  ideal  —  better  called  the  real, 
And  certain  to  be  called  so  presently, 
When  things  shall  have  their  names." 

True  it  is  that  the  earthly  cannot  com- 
prehend the  heavenly,  because  the  earthly 
has  no  life  in  itself.  But  heavenly  charac- 
ter can  fill  these  earthly  moulds  with  living 
forms.  For  Earth  also  belongs  to  God,  and 
perhaps  only  waits  our  cooperation  with 
Him,  to  become  pliant  to  His  touch  as  clay 
to  the  artist's  hand  and  thought ;  no  longer 
inanimate  dust,  but  the  revelation  of  a 
beautiful  ideal.  In  the  clods  we  tread  be- 
neath our  feet  there  are  imprisoned  angels 
waiting  for  release. 

We  think  of  heaven  as  something  that 
must  visit  us  from  afar,  replacing  with  un- 
imagined  wonders  our  familiar  surround- 
ings, a  new  creation  for  which  new  capaci- 
ties must  be  created  within  us.  But  the 
new  heaven  and  the  new  earth  will  only 
be  the  unveiling  to  us  of  what  already  is. 
It  is  only  our  blindness  that  needs  to  be 


The  Heaven  that  Is  25 

removed  —  only  our  spiritual  faculties  that 
need  to  be  awakened. 

We  are  too  much  in  the  habit  of  looking 
forward  to  heaven  as  to  something  that 
will  be,  —  an  easier,  pleasanter  story  for 
us  to  read  when  we  have  finished  this  tire- 
some earth-narrative,  —  a  luxurious  palace- 
chamber  to  rest  in  after  this  life's  drudgery 
is  ended,  —  a  remote  celestial  mountain- 
retreat  where  the  sound  of  the  restless 
waves  of  humanity  forever  fretting  their 
shores  will  vex  our  ears  no  longer.  And* 
so  we  stumble  on,  pitying  ourselves  for  the 
hard  times  we  have  to  endure  on  earth,  and 
singing  our  songs  of  the  "  sweet  by-and- 
by,"  as  if  there  were  some  saving  merit  in 
having  patience  with  time,  and  in  dream- 
ing of  a  broader  and  happier  realm  that 
we  call  eternity.  But  the  eternal  issues 
are  now  and  here,  in  our  thoughts  and 
deeds,  in  our  simple,  common,  every-day 
relations  to  God  and  to  our  fellow-beings. 
To-day,  or  never,  —  here,  or  nowhere,  — 
is  eternity. 


26  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

We  know  nothing  of  life,  —  of  God's 
life  or  of  our  own,  —  and  we  have  no  real 
life  but  His,  —  except  by  living  it.  The 
foundations  of  heaven  are  laid  in  human 
character.  The  precious  stones  upon 
which  the  Holy  City  is  built  are  the  lives 
which,  according  to  their  own  distinctive 
nature,  receive  and  transmit  the  light  of 
the  Divine  Life,  each  with  a  different  lus- 
tre. The  glory  of  God  and  of  the  Lamb, 
of  the  Father  and  the  Son,  is  that  City's 
perfect  illumination.  The  celestial  glory 
is  the  glory  of  love  and  truth  and  holiness. 
Without  these  there  were  no  heavenly  life, 
and  therefore  no  heaven. 

Holiness,  truth,  love,  —  these  are  the 
realities  which  are  unseen  and  eternal. 
But  they  cannot  be  held  as  mere  abstrac- 
tions. They  have  no  meaning  to  us  ex- 
cept as  personal  attributes.  Only  a  person 
can  be  righteous  and  loving  and  pure.  In 
loving  God,  we  love  the  One  in  whom 
these  qualities  are  perfectly  revealed.  In 
seeking  heaven,  we  seek  the  region  where 


The  Heaven  that  Is  27 

they  are  recognized  and  welcomed  as  the 
supreme  law.  So  God  makes  and  abides 
in  His  own  heaven,  the  heaven  that  He 
Himself  is.  And  so  is  He,  through  all 
generations,  the  true  and  only  dwelling- 
place  of  His  children. 

To  live  unlovingly,  untruthfully,  unright- 
eously, is  to  live  outside  of  heaven,  even 
though  one  should  build  a  house  for  him- 
self in  the  full  dazzle  of  the  Great  White 
Throne  :  while  the  darkest  corner  of  earth 
is  heaven  to  him  who  is  living  the  life  of 
God  therein,  though  he  may  be  unaware 
of  the  glory  that  surrounds  him. 

Heaven  is.  Already  its  atmosphere 
touches  this  lower  firmament;  already  the 
heavenly  -  minded  breathe  its  air.  The 
same  love  throbs  in  their  hearts  that  stirs 
in  the  souls  of  those  who  have  passed  on 
beyond  all  mortal  hindrances.  A  little 
while,  and  the  realities  in  which  they  both 
live  will  be  fully  unveiled. 

Surprises  doubtless  await  us  all,  across 
the  boundaries  of   this   earthly  existence. 


28  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

But  none,  perhaps,  will  be  more  surprised 
than  those  humble,  faithful,  self-sacrificing 
souls  who  have  often  almost  dreaded  the 
strange  splendors  that  might  open  upon 
them  beyond  the  gates  of  pearl,  when  they 
find  that  it  is  the  same  familiar  sunshine 
in  which  they  have  been  walking  all  their 
days,  only  clearer  and  serener.  They  will 
wonder  that  they  have  no  new  language  to 
learn,  no  new  habits  to  form,  almost  no 
new  acquaintances  to  make.  They  will  at 
last  discover  what  their  humility  hid  from 
them  here,  that  while  on  earth,  without 
knowing  it,  they  had  already  been  living 
in  heaven. 


III. 


Blending  Atmospheres. 
OOKING  out  upon  the  landscape 


from  the  upper  slopes  of  a  high 
mountain,  you  cannot  help  seeing 
how  the  earth  and  the  sky  are  always  try- 
ing to  blend  with  each  other.  They  are 
like  lovers  who  cannot  stay  apart.  The 
breath  of  the  valleys  ascends  in  a  soft  mist 
that  creeps  up,  up,  to  the  highest  moun- 
tain ranges,  and  gradually  shapes  itself  into 
clouds  ;  or  it  lies  in  long,  clinging  bands 
about  their  bases,  and  makes  their  sum- 
mits appear  like  islands  in  an  ethereal  sea. 
And  the  sunset  tints  the  clouds  above  and 
the  mists  below  with  one  loveliness  of 
color,  and  the  wind  weaves  them  together 
so  delicately  that  you  cannot  tell  which  is 
mist  and  which  is  cloud.  The  lines  of  the 
horizon  gradually  vanish  ;  river  and  valley 


jo  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

and  mountain  and  mist  intermingle  and  are 
fused  in  a  glory  behind  and  above  them  all, 
and  greater  than  their  own.  A  mountain 
sunset  is  like  the  marriage  of  the  visible 
and  the  unseen,  the  new  heaven  and  the 
new  earth,  the  bride  "  descending  out  of 
heaven  from  God,  having  the  glory  of 
God." 

And  when  it  all  fades  away,  and  the 
stars  come  out  of  the  purple  deeps  above, 
the  feeling  of  our  human  nearness  to  the 
infinite  is  intensified.  In  the  loneliness  of 
night  on  the  mountain-top  we  comprehend 
something  of  our  relationship  to  those 
heavenly  spheres  ;  we  are  at  home  on  our 
own  star,  moving  beside  these  radiant 
neighbors  of  ours  through  illimitable  space. 

The  planets  which  give  to  our  evening 
sky  its  chief  splendor  are  but  illuminated 
earth,  of  the  same  material  as  our  own  ;  as 
they  shine  for  us,  so  we  shine  for  them. 
We  are  one  body  and  soul  with  them.  The 
ether  that  throbs  between  seems  to  sep- 
arate while  it  really  unites  us.     Every  par- 


Blending  Atmospheres  31 

tide  of  this  solid  world  thus  becomes  lumi- 
nous ;  every  pebble  that  we  heedlessly 
tread  upon  is  precious,  for  it  is  of  the  very 
substance  of  the  stars.  The  soul  of  the 
star  is  its  light,  that  flows  through  it  from 
some  unguessed  Beyond.  And  the  soul  of 
that  light,  of  all  living  light,  is  Love. 
And  love  cannot  be,  without  a  Being  who 
loves.  God  is  at  the  heart  of  all  beings 
and  of  all  things,  seeking  to  bring  them 
into  unity  with  each  other,  the  unity  of  His 
love  and  peace.  Nature  and  humanity  are 
one  in  Him,  and  refuse  to  be  put  asunder. 
Since  we,  too,  can  love,  we  know  that 
we  are  of  God  in  some  more  vital  way  than 
rocks  or  trees,  or  than  our  own  bodies. 
But  Love  has  no  contempts.  She  sees  all 
things  in  God,  and  she  feels  the  throb- 
bing of  her  own  heart,  the  Life  of  God  in 
her  life,  beating  back  to  her  through  what 
are  esteemed  the  meanest  of  His  works. 

"  A  weed,  to  him  who  loves  it,  is  a  flower." 

And  Love  continually  hears  a  sound  as  of 
human  expostulation  and   entreaty  coming 


$2  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

up  to  her  from  tangled  and  neglected 
wastes,  which,  to  other  ears,  are  buried  in 
savage  silence.  The  earthly  palpitates  with 
a  dim  consciousness  of  its  heavenly  affini- 
ties and  possibilities,  which  will  sometime 
be  realized. 

The  mute  eloquence  of  Nature  around 
us  is  often  most  pathetic  ;  — the  beauty 
that  is  everywhere  taking  crude  shapes, 
trying  to  find  expression.  Sometimes  this 
pathos  is  made  audible  to  us  through  sweet, 
half-developed  voices.  Waters  murmur ; 
winds  whisper  and  moan  ;  grass  and  blos- 
som and  leafy  bough  sigh  back  to  each 
other,  like  children  who  cannot  tell  what 
they  want.  The  dumb  rock  tries  to  write 
out  its  message  with  hieroglyphic  lichens. 
Sea-moss  and  fern  conceal  mystical  secrets 
beneath  their  spreading  fronds.  The 
lowest  forms  of  matter  overflow  with 
significance.  Even  the  slimy  ooze  of  the 
lake  and  the  black  coal  in  the  mine  hold 
an  essence  of  purity  within  them  which 
nurses  the  white  life  of  the  lily,  and  kindles 


Blending  Atmospheres  33 

the  sparkle  of  the  diamond.  Nothing  is 
so  dead  that  it  does  not  seek  utterance  — 
that  it  does  not  strive  to  blend  itself  with 
some  unattainable  perfection  above  itself. 
The  silence  of  Nature  is  an  unuttered 
prayer  for  release  —  for  reunion  with  her 
Source. 

For  Nature  is  not  yet  released  from 
bondage,  nor  can  she  be  while  we  permit 
ourselves  to  be  bondslaves  to  her.  We, 
whose  birthright  is  the  liberty  of  the  chil- 
dren of  God,  desire  a  King  for  ourselves, 
—  insist  that  Earth  shall  be  our  sovereign 
instead  of  our  servant,  binding  ourselves 
down  beneath  her  and  with  her  in  unnat- 
ural fetters,  and  so  turning  her  palaces  into 
dungeons.  No  wonder  that  the  whole 
creation  groans,  being  burdened. 

It  is  one  of  the  perplexing  problems  of 
our  being,  how  to  find  our  right  relations 
to  the  natural  world.  In  our  best  moods, 
we  feel,  with  the  good  mediaeval  saint,  that 
the  sun  and  the  moon  and  the  elements 
are  our  brothers  and  sisters,  children  with 


34  4s  it  is  in  Heaven 

us  in  the  same  household.  We  cannot 
believe  ourselves  unrelated  tq.  anything 
that  God  has  made,  —  and  we  are  not. 
Yet  matter  is  not  spirit,  nor  is  spirit  mat- 
ter, though  neither  can  find  its  true  life 
apart  from  the  other.  What  if  out  of  our 
purified  human  hearts  are  to  be  the  issues 
of  life  to  the  lower  natures  which  sur- 
round us  ? 

"  These  material  coverings  which  we 
wear  "  —  writes  the  author  of  "  Foregleams 
of  Immortality"  —  "obey  the  law  of  the 
immortal  man  within  them  ;  let  that  be 
purged  of  evil  and  it  will  transform  the 
whole  outward  nature,  and  make  our  ma- 
terial clothings  fit  to  us  as  our  robe  of 
righteousness.  Matter  is  neither  good 
nor  evil  except  as  magnetized  by  the  spirit 
within.  ...  In  that  day  when  the  savagery 
in  men  has  been  eliminated  or  softened 
down,  the  savagery  in  brute  natures  will 
be  softened  also,  as  reflecting  his  own 
nature  back  upon  them  ;  for  there  are 
fine  invisible  nerves  that  pervade  all  the 


Blending  Atmospheres  35 

universe*  and  run  down  from  man  into  all 
the  lower  creation,  and  when  he  is  himself 
redeemed  will  draw  the  lower  creation 
towards  him  and  harmonize  it  with  him 
in  one  great  atonement.  For  in  just  the 
measure  that  the  lion  in  man's  nature 
lies  down  with  the  lamb,  just  in  the  same 
measure  will  the  peace  be  radiated  on  all 
things  about  him. 

"  There  is  a  sort  of  sympathy  of  all  Na- 
ture with  all  humanity.  She  copies  out  of 
man  what  is  in  him,  that  he  may  see  himself 
face  to  face.  And  so  her  types  beneficent 
will  grow  fairer  to  us,  and  sparkle  with  a 
more  glorious  beauty  as  we  grow  better 
and  drink  more  largely  the  spirit  of  mercy  ; 
and  her  ugly  deformities  will  grow  more 
ugly  if  they  become  the  looking-glass  of 
our  own  mind.  .  .  .  Man's  redemption  is  at 
the  same  time  the  redemption  of  all  the 
creatures  over  which  he  has  dominion,  and 
the  redemption  of  nature  from  the  curse 
that  lay  upon  it,  for  the  curse  is  primarily 
in  himself.     Let  his  own  heart  and  mind 


36  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

become  paradisiacal  and  he  will  enter  Para- 
dise again,  for  its  light  will  be  on  the  fields, 
the  rivers  and  the  mountains." 

We  are  awed  by  the  sacred  responsibility 
God  thus  lays  upon  us,  of  being  creators, 
with  Him,  of  the  new  heavens  and  the  new 
earth.  His  Spirit,  breathed  through  us, 
shall  make  this  sad,  half-dead  world  feel 
within  herself  the  stirrings  of  a  living  soul ! 
His  Spirit,  Soul  of  our  souls,  Breath  of 
our  breath  !  Ah  !  beautiful  it  is  to  live 
through  Him,  in  Him, — beautiful  both 
for  worlds  and  for  souls  ! 

We  feel  Him  around  us,  above  us,  within 
us,  —  the  pure  exhilaration  of  immortality. 
The  breath  of  the  Spirit  is  like  the  air 
which  is  astir  everywhere,  —  choked  and 
smothered  among  the  fetid  growths  of  the 
marsh,  free  and  untainted  on  the  mountain- 
top.  We  cannot  live  among  the  miasmatic 
exhalations  of  the  bog,  nor  can  we  breathe 
naturally  upon  summits  clad  in  perpetual 
snow.  Being  human,  we  belong  in  zones 
where  heaven  and  earth  healthfully  blend 


Blending  Atmospheres  37 

their  atmospheres  ;  though  we  are  seldom 
in  danger,  with  our  low  earthly  clinging, 
of  ascending  into  ether  too  pure.  It  is 
from  the  highest  heavens  that  earth  and 
our  souls  must  be  continually  refreshed ; 
and  there  is  no  vigor  like  that  we  obtain 
from  accustoming  ourselves  to  the  air  of 
lofty  spiritual  altitudes. 

Yet  it  is  possible  for  righteousness  to 
be  too  hard,  and  purity  too  cold.  The 
flower  will  grow  beneath  the  frowning 
rock,  and  even  upon  the  fringe  of  the  ever- 
lasting snows,  —  but  not  without  the  sun. 
It  must  have  warmth  as  well  as  light  and 
strength  from  the  heavens.  Love  is  the 
mother-heart  of  the  sun  to  the  blossom. 
Love  is  the  fusing  element  of  all  life  —  the 
tremulous,  softly-defined  horizon-line  that 
at  once  separates  and  unites  the  spheres, 
terminating  our  human  vision  ;  the  tryst- 
ing-place  where  earth  and  heaven  meet. 
Beneath  its  tender  atmospheric  suffusions 
all  imperfections  are  hidden  and  forgotten, 
as  if  they  were  not.     Life  is  at  one  with 


38  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

itself,  in  its  incompleteness,  in  its  aspira- 
tions and  its  prophecies. 

The  mysterious  interblending  of  day  and 
night  in  all  vast,  lonely  expanses,  appeals 
to  a  sense  of  deeper  vastness  within  our- 
selves. Grand  as  nature  is,  it  only  typifies 
something  grander  in  man  ;  unconscious 
heights  and  breadths  and  depths  within  him, 
waiting  to  embosom  themselves  within  the 
life  and  light  of  God.  Seeking  that  in- 
effable oneness  with  Him,  man  and  nature 
send  up  together  one  yearning  response 
through  the  holy  silence  :  "  Grant  us  Thy 
peace !  " 

The  sunset  ebbs  down  the  mountain- 
slopes,  and  village  and  wilderness  fall  asleep 
quietly  side  by  side.  Twilight  touches  all 
growths  with  its  chrismal  dews.  Night 
falls  softly  upon  the  earth,  revealing  to  us 
our  near  and  glorious  companionship  of 
stars,  and  leaving  us  to  float  away  with 
them  through  the  solitudes  of  heaven. 
Home-lights  twinkle  up  from  the  darkness 
below   with    a   radiance    indistinguishable 


Blending  Atmospheres  39 

from  the  light  of  stars.  Lifted  into  the 
overbrooding  stillness,  we  feel  only  the 
throbbing  of  One  infinite  Heart.  All 
things,  —  all  souls  of  things,  —  are  indisso- 
lubly  one  in  the  Eternal  Love.  Through 
all  the  universe  there  is  no  longer  any 
sigh  of  separation. 

"  So  when  for  us  life's  evening  hour 
Soft  falling  shall  descend, 
May  glory  born  of  earth  and  heaven 
The  earth  and  heavens  blend  ;  — 

"  Flooded  with  peace  the  spirit  float, 
With  silent  rapture  glow, 
Till  where  earth  ends  and  heaven  begins 
The  soul  shall  scarcely  know  " 


IV. 


A  Transparent  World. 

N  some  moods,  and  to  some  na- 
tures almost  habitually,  Nature  is 
an  open  secret.  Looking  into  her 
mysteries,  it  is  as  if  the  gates  between  her 
and  heaven  were  of  transparent  crystal  in- 
stead of  clouded  pearl.  This  can  only  be 
when  the  spiritual  vision  is  free  from  ob- 
scuring films.  The  prophet,  the  poet  and 
the  little  child  are  alike  in  their  peculiar 
insight :  they  see  into  things,  and  see 
them  as  they  are,  because  their  eyes  are 
clear. 

The  ignoble  prophet  whom  the  heathen 
king  called  to  curse  Israel  could  only  un- 
fold the  vision  of.  blessing  from  the  Al- 
mighty that  he  saw  —  "  the  man  whose 
eyes  are  open."  And  Elisha,  "the  man 
of  God,"  when   his   servant  cried   out  in 


A  Transparent  World  41 

despair  at  the  sight  of  the  surrounding 
Syrian  army,  had  only  to  ask  that  the  out- 
dazzling  heavenly  encampment  which  en- 
girded them  yet  more  closely  might  be 
shown  him:  —  "Lord,  I  pray  thee,  open 
his  eyes,  that  he  may  see." 

If  the  child  sees  heaven  in  its  mother's 
eyes,  not  less  does  the  mother  in  the 
child's.  Who  has  not  felt,  in  meeting  the 
calm,  wonder-lighted  impenetrable  earnest- 
ness of  a  baby's  gaze,  that  if  it  had  but 
words,  it  could  reveal  unfathomed  secrets  ? 

"  Heaven  lies  about  us  in  our  infancy." 

"Thou  little  Child," 

.      "  thou  eye  among  the  blind," 

"  That,  deaf  and  silent,  read'st  the  eternal  deep, 
Haunted  forever  by  the  eternal  mind,"  — 

"  Thou,  over  whom  thy  immortality 
Broods  like  the  day,  a  master  o'er  a  slave, 
A  Presence  which  is  not  to  be  put  by." 

What  wonder  that  Wordsworth,  himself 
a  seer,  should  so  often  return  to  this  idea 
of  the  seer-like  intuitions  of  childhood,  and 
through  it  should  find  highest  assurance  of 
the  Divine  approach  to  our  humanity  !  — 


42  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

"  Thou,  who  didst  wrap  the  cloud 
Of  infancy  around  us,  that  thyself 
Therein  with  our  simplicity  awhile 
Might'st  hold,  on  earth,  communion  undisturbed." 

The  clear  vision  of  childhood  becomes 
gradually  dimmed  by  earthliness,  but 
beauty  and  truth  remain  within  all  forms, 
and  the  poet  sees  them  "  through  a  glass, 
darkly  ;  "  by  signs  and  similitudes.  Saint 
Paul  was  giving  utterance  to  the  deepest 
poetic  reality,  when  he  said  that  "  the  in- 
visible things  of  Him  since  the  creation  of 
the  world  are  clearly  seen,  being  perceived 
through  the  things  that  are  made."  Na- 
ture is  one  vast  metaphor,»through  which 
spiritual  truth  may  be  read.  As  our  hearts 
harden  with  worldliness,  we  must  be 
spoken  to  in  parables.  But  to  the  children 
of  the  kingdom  the  hidden  mysteries 
around  them  are  continually  unveiled.  In 
nature,  as  in  all  things  and  everywhere,  the 
pure  in  heart  see  God. 

And  the  pure  in  heart  not  only  see  God 
themselves,  but  they  become  a  medium  for 


A  Transparent  World  43 

transmitting  His  thoughts  to  others.  It  is 
at  last  as  if  God  were  thinking  through 
every  look  and  movement  of  the  purified 
soul.  And  two  souls  whose  vision  has 
grown  clear  with  His  purity  scarcely  have 
need  of  speech  when  they  meet.  The  crys- 
tal between  them  is  without  a  film.  They 
"  know  as  they  are  known."  All  living 
things  bear  their  messages  from  heart  to 
heart,  as  from  heaven  to  heaven. 

Who  knows  what  language  may  be 
among  the  angels  ?  Their  alphabet  may 
be  the  intonations  of  the  wind,  the  colors 
and  odors  of  flowers,  the  changeful  suffu- 
sions of  sunset'  tints,  or  the  musical  drop- 
ping of  twilight  dews. 

It  is  one  of  the  greatest  delights  in  life 
to  spell  out  God's  meanings  in  the  visible 
world,  or  rather  —  for  this  is  the  privilege 
of  all  our  Father's  children  —  to  lie  in  His 
bosom  with  our  whole  souls  so  open  to  Him 
that  His  thoughts  shine  through  our  being, 
seeming  to  us  as  if  they  were  our  own. 
Then  His  mountains  lift  us  up  with  their 


44  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

strength,  His  rivers  flow  through  us  with 
their  freshness,  and  on  His  shoreless  ocean 
we  share  the  freedom  of  His  infinity. 

Said  William  Blake,  "  The  man  who  in 
his  mind  and  thought  never  traveled  to 
heaven  is  no  artist."  "When  the  sun 
rises,  I  see,  —  not  a  round  disc  of  fire,  — 
but  an  innumerable  company  of  the  heav- 
enly host,  crying  '  Holy,  holy,  holy  is  the 
Lord  God  Almighty.'  " 

"It  is,"  writes  one  who  while  on  earth 
looked  far  into  heavenly  things,  "  only  a 
fulfillment  of  the  deepest  prophesyings  of 
renovated  souls  —  prophesy ings  that  the 
poet  and  the  artist  utter  in  broken  speech 
—  when  the  Divine  Revealers  show  us  a 
spiritual  world  that  transcends  the  natu- 
ral :  a  world  of  forms  and  substances  so 
much  nearer  in  degree  to  spirit  that  they 
pulsate  with  its  life  and  breathe  with  its 
f  ragrancy,  and  put  on  robes  chromatic  with 
all  its  beauty,  and  quick  with  all  the  rus- 
tlings of  its  love ;  a  world  of  objective 
scenery,    on    which   ever    lies    the    sweet 


A  Transparent  World  45 

morning-light  of  subjective  peace  ;  a  world, 
therefore,  whose  leaf  can  never  fade,  and 
whose  flower  can  never  wither,  because 
it  wears  the  colorings  of  souls  that  are 
flooded  with  the  life  everlasting." 

Another,  sitting  under  his  quiet  roof-tree 
in  the  sunset  of  his  years,  hears  the  voice 
of  God  in  the  garden  in  the  cool  of  the 
day,  and  meditates  thus  :  — 

"  In  cornfields  and  orchards,  it  is  as 
though,  from  among  the  yellow  corn  and 
out  of  the  tree-tops,  it  were  said  to  thought- 
ful listeners,  '  O  taste  and  see  that  the 
Lord  is  good  ! '  And  the  westerly  wind  is 
like  a  soft  whisper  out  of  the  infinite,  say- 
ing '  God  is  love  ;  hope  thou  in  Him  ! ' 

Milton  puts  into  the  mouth  of  the  fallen 
spirit,  at  his  first  glimpse  of  the  newly 
created  world,  the  envious  cry  — 

"  O  earth  !  how  like  to  heaven,  if  not  preferred 
More  justly,  seat  worthier  of  gods,  as  built 
With  second  thoughts,  reforming  what  was  old  ! " 

This  was  the  spiteful  bitterness  of  one 
who  hated  the  perfection   from   which  he 


46  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

had  made  himself  an  outcast.  Raphael, 
"the  affable  archangel,"  with  the  glory  of 
the  invisible  throne  still  lingering  "on  his 
brow,  sees  the  resemblance,  also,  but  only 
as  a  suggestion  of  the  beauty  which  is  un- 
utterable.    He  says  to  Adam  :  — 

"  What  if  earth 
Be  but  the  shadow  of  heaven,  and  things  therein 
Each  to  other  like,  more  than  on  earth  is  thought  ? " 

Since  nothing  in  the  visible  universe,  so 
far  as  we  know,  is  unrelated  to  the  rest,  — 
since  everything  created  points  upward  to 
something  higher  than  itself,  impelled  by 
some  hidden  power  of  growth,  through  an 
ascending  series,  almost  as  if  matter  were 
trying  to  find  its  way  up  to  spirit,  —  since 
the  visible  is  so  evidently  a  foreshadowing 
of  an  invisible  life,  —  it  would  be  strange 
if  there  were  not  in  -  shinings  downward 
through  matter  from  that  unseen  realm. 
And  that  is  what  the  poet  and  the  seer 
and  the  believer  do  find,  —  spirit  revealing 
itself  through  form  —  the  invisible  through 
the  visible. 


A  Transparent  World  47 

Mrs.  Browning  tells  us  — 

"That  not  a  natural  flower  can  grow  on  earth, 
Without  a  flower  upon  the  spiritual  side, 
Substantial,  archetypal,  all  aglow 
With  blossoming  causes,  —  not  so  far  away 
That  we,  whose  spirit-sense  is  somewhat  cleared, 
May  not  catch  something  of  the  bloom  and  breath, 
Too  vaguely  apprehended,  though  indeed 
Still  apprehended,  consciously  or  not." 

Have  we  not  felt  the  freshness  of  a  cher- 
ub's cheek  and  breath  in  the  wild-rose 
petal  laid  against  our  lips  ?  Swinging  upon 
her  rock  as  if  just  alighted  out  of  the  sky, 
clad  in  translucent  azure,  have  we  not  seen 
the  harebell  as  a  spirit,  rather  than  as  a 
flower  ?  Who  shall  speak  of  the  wild  rose 
and  the  harebell  as  dying  things,  when  the 
soul  has  once  received  their  beauty  and 
known  it  to  be  immortal  ?  The  grass 
withers  and  the  flower  fades ;  but  their 
beauty  was  an  utterance  of  the  word  of  the 
Lord,  and  that  must  endure  forever.  It  is 
only  the  earthliness  of  earth  that  decays  ; 
the  spirit,  the  living  form  that  was  in  it, 
lives  on.     That  which  revealed  God  in  an 


48  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

earthly  image,  re-blooming  in  the  heavenly, 
will  reveal  Him  forever.  From  every  ob- 
ject that  we  look  upon  with  love,  we  are 
gathering  greater  wisdom  than  we  know ; 
we  are  learning  lessons  that  we  shall  never 
forget.  A  good  man  previously  quoted 
says,  — 

"  In  some  age  or  other,  I  shall  say  of 
some  heavenly  marvel,  perhaps,  '  It  is  won- 
derful !  wonderful  ! '  And  yet,  in  the  earth 
it  was  hinted  to  me  by  the  tones  of  the 
wind,  and  the  way  the  clouds  went  over  my 
head  !  I  think  perhaps  every  sight  in  the 
world  that  now  is  may  avail  us  in  the  world 
that  is  to  come.  If  I  knew  all  that  is  to 
be  learned  from  a  daisy  even,  I  should  be 
less  a  stranger  to  God  than  I  am.  But  I 
shall  know  it  some  time.  All  about  me 
tree  unto  tree  is  uttering  speech,  and 
flower  unto  flower  is  showing  knowledge. 
It  is  in  a  language  that  I  do  not  well  un- 
derstand, but  which  I  shall  remember,  and 
so  shall  learn  the  whole  meaning  of  here- 
after." 


A  Transparent  World  49 

Well  may  a  poet  sing  — 

"  Woo  on,  with  odor  wooing  me, 
Faint  rose,  with  fading  core  ! 
For  God's  rose-thought  that  blooms  in  thee 
Will  bloom  forevermore  !  " 

When  Christ  said  "  Consider  the  lilies  !  " 
He  could  not  have  been  looking  upon  them 
as  dying  things,  but  as  white  radiances  in 
the  garden  of  God,  bearing  his  message  to 
mortals.  Behind  them  he  saw  human 
spirits  robed  in  purity  and  faith,  the  flower 
and  the  disciple  growing  up  together  in  the 
light  of  God's  love,  and  showing  forth  His 
glory.  More  than  a  figure  it  is  when  we 
speak  of  heaven  as  Paradise,  —  a  garden,  — 
a  place  of  growths,  where  our  spirits  shall 
develop  among  other  spiritual  forms  for- 
ever. To  love,  to  learn,  and  to  grow,  — 
these  three  things  the  heavenly  life  must 
mean,  wherever  it  is  lived. 

Nature  becomes  a  divine  study,  when 
we  see  that  things  apparently  inanimate 
are  alive,  and  may  claim  a  share  in  our 
immortality.      Then  everything  that  God 


$o  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

has  thought  it  worth  His  while  to  create  is 
seen  to  be  sacred.     And  man  at  last  — 

"By  contemplating  these  forms 
In  the  relations  which  they  bear  to  man, 
Shall  discern  how,  through  the  various  means 
Which  silently  they  yield,  are  multiplied 
The  spiritual  presences  of  absent  things. 

Science  then 
Shall  be  a  precious  visitant ;  and  then 
And  only  then,  be  worthy  of  her  name, 
For  then  her  heart  shall  kindle." 

That  time  will  surely  come,  and  might 
come  now  for  us,  if  we  would  open  our 
eyes,  — or  rather,  if  we  would  but  earnestly 
desire  that  they  might  be  opened.  Then 
we  should  see  — 

"  Every  common  bush  a-fire  with  God.' 

The  stones  of  the  wilderness  would  become 
to  us  a  stairway  for  ascending  and  descend- 
ing angels.  We  should  say,  in  the  desert 
which  had  seemed  to  us  most  dreary  and 
barren,  "  Surely  the  Lord  is  in  this  place  ; 
and  I  knew  it  not."  "  This  is  none  other 
but  the  house  of  God,  and  this  is  the  gate 
of  heaven." 


V. 


The  Human  Mirror. 

E  know  the  very  first  thought  God 
had  about  us,  before  we  came  into 
visible  existence  ;  —  "Let  us  make 
man  in  our  own  image."  He  thought  it  of 
humanity  as  a  whole,  and  He  thought  it  of 
every  separate  human  being  ;  for  humanity 
is  no  abstract  idea,  but  a  family  composed 
of  individuals,  each  his  Father's  child. 
The  grandeur  of  it  !  The  thoughts  of  God 
are  eternal,  and  so  there  never  was  a  time 
when  He  was  not  thinking  of  us,  His  dear 
children  who  were  to  be.  We  were  to  be 
like  Him.  What  that  means  we  cannot 
fully  comprehend,  because  finite  creatures 
can  form  no  conception  of  an  infinite  na- 
ture ;  yet  we  know  that  if  we  are  truly  His 
children,  we  must  in  some  sense  share  His 
infiniteness. 


52  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

In  our  childish  endeavor  to  imagine 
what  it  means  to  be  made  in  the  image  of 
God,  we  transpose  the  terms,  and  make  a 
God  in  our  own  image,  with  all  our  mortal 
limitations  and  imperfections, — weak,  par- 
tial, revengeful,  tyrannical.  This  attempt 
to  limit  and  describe  God,  to  shape  in  the 
moulds  of  our  petty  comprehension  Him 
who  is  invisible  and  incomprehensible,  is 
at  the  root  of  all  idolatry.  It  sounds  arro- 
gant to  speak  of  ourselves  as  bearing  the 
image  of  the  Infinite  One,  but  unless  we 
do,  we  are  not  the  children  of  our  Father 
who  is  in  heaven.  And  it  is  not  arrogance 
but  humility  to  feel  and  acknowledge  that 
we  have  no  life  but  His,  and  reverently  to 
receive  from  Him  our  immortal  inheritance. 
The  lowliest  wayside  flower  takes  into  its 
tissues  all  the  endlessly  free  elements  that 
compose  the  atmosphere  ;  the  eye,  by  its 
very  construction,  demands  a  boundless 
horizon  ;  and  the  human  spirit  refuses  to 
be  fed  from  any  but  infinite  sources.  It  is 
the  little  planet,  shaped  in  the  likeness  of 


The  Human  Mirror  53 

the  sun,  absorbing  and  reflecting  his  inex- 
haustible overflow  of  light. 

We  must  construct  no  gods  for  our- 
selves, with  our  hands  or  with  our  imagina- 
tion. A  soul's  worship  of  the  Infinite  Soul 
allows  no  boundaries.  We  cannot  define 
God,  but  our  lives  can  be  the  mirror  of  His 
life ;  and  that  is  the  very  purpose  of  our 
being. 

If  we  alone  among  all  the  creatures  in 
this  world  are  made  in  the  image  of  God, 
it  must  be  through  something  wherein  we 
are  different  from  them  —  through  the  pos- 
session of  a  nature  which  can  grasp  moral 
and  spiritual  truth,  and  can  shape  itself 
thereby.  In  moments  when  we  are  truest 
to  ourselves,  we  know  that  we  are  capable 
of  this ;  and  with  this  certainty  a  glimpse 
of  the  boundlessness  of  our  being  bursts 
upon  us.  "  Beloved,  now  are  we  the  sons 
of  God,  and  it  doth  not  yet  appear  what  we 
shall  be."  The  children,  when  they  see 
their  Father  more  truly  as  He  is,  through 
loving  Him  will   become  like  Him.     But 


54  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

they  will  never  take  in  His  full  glory  :  it 
will  be  growing  upon  them  and  into  them 
forever.  And  their  humility  must  increase 
as  they  are  drawn  nearer  to  His  Heart,  the 
centre  of  His  burning  perfections.  With 
the  archangels  who  cry  continually,  "  Holy, 
holy,  holy  Lord  God  Almighty,"  they  will 
veil  their  faces  as  they  sing  His  praise. 

We  are  farthest  away  from  God  when  we 
cannot  perceive  Him  in  our  fellow-beings. 
The  mirror  of  human  nature  is  sadly 
blurred,  but  in  the  meanest  and  wickedest 
there  are  tokens  of  the  Divine  childhood; 
—  occasional  flashes  of  the  Father's  image 
through  innumerable  distortions.  It  is  for 
us  to  show  a  clear  reflection  of  His  life  in 
our  own  lives,  before  we  judge  others.  And 
it  is  not  for  us  to  belittle  ourselves  by  de- 
tecting flaws  in  those  who  by  their  charac- 
ter and  actions  most  truly  reveal  Him  to 
mankind.  This  is  heaven  on  earth,  —  to 
see  our  Father's  face  in  the  faces  of  our 
brethren.  There  are  those  around  us  who 
do  so  reveal   Him  almost  without  a  blur. 


The  Human  Mirror  55 

Few  of  us  but  can  say,  with  gratitude  to 
God  — 

"  I  know  the  face  of  him  who  with  the  sphere 
Of  unseen  presences  communion  keeps  ; 
His  eyes  retain  its  wonder  in  their  clear 
Unfathomable  deeps. 

"  He  brings  the  thought  that  gives  to  earthly  things 
Eternal  meaning  ;  brings  the  living  faith 
That  even  now  puts  on  immortal  wings, 
And  clears  the  shadow,  Death." 

These  rare  illustrations  of  human  char- 
acter are  but  the  suggestion  of  possibilities 
that  lie  dormant  in  men  who  appear  to  us 
commonplace,  — a  term  we  should  use  far 
less  frequently  regarding  any  person  if  we 
kept  in  mind  how  crude  and  foolish  we 
must  all  seem  to  natures  above  us,  who 
have  never  failed  to  fulfil  the  laws  of  their 
being.  Angelic  intelligences,  we  are  told, 
do  desire  to  look  into  the  developing  capa- 
bilities of  regenerate  humanity.  We  are  a 
mystery  that  interests  them  :  and  we,  in 
all  humility,  might  well  take  a  reverent  in- 
terest in  those  whom  we  now  sometimes 


56  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

pass   by  with   supercilious  glances.     Mrs. 
Browning  makes  Aurora  Leigh  say 

"  Look  long  enough 
On  any  peasant's  face  here,  coarse  and  lined, — 
You  '11  catch  Antinous  somewhere  in  that  clay, 
As  perfect-featured  as  he  yearns  at  Rome 
From  marble  pale  with  beauty :  then  persist, 
And,  if  your  apprehension  's  competent, 
You  '11  find  some  fairer  angel  at  his  back, 
As  much  exceeding  him,  as  he  the  boor, 
And  pushing  him  with  empyreal  disdain 
Forever  out  of  sight." 

Every  human  being,  every  form  which 
was  meant  to  reveal  the  presence  of  a  soul, 
and  so  be  a  revelation  of  God,  commands 
our  utmost  reverence.  These  are  noble 
words  of  Novalis  :  — 

"  There  is  but  one  temple  in  the  world, 
and  that  temple  is  the  Body  of  Man. 
Nothing  is  holier  than  this  high  form.  We 
touch  heaven  when  we  lay  our  hands  on  a 
human  body." 

Nor  have  we  a  right  to  think  slightingly 
of  any  of  our  natural  faculties  or  affections ; 
since,  so  far  as  we  know,  our  whole  nature 


The  Human  Mirror  $j 

is  formed  in  the  image  of  God.  It  is  true 
that  through  some  of  these  we  seem  re- 
lated to  the  animal  creation,  — as  if  the  stir 
of  the  Central  Life  eddied  out  to  the  ex- 
treme, unknown  boundaries  of  visible  and 
tangible  being.  All  our  powers  have  their 
low  and  their  high,  their  earthly  and  their 
spiritual  possibilities  of  expression.  We 
know  that  we  belong  to  God,  by  the  inward 
consciousness  that  we  oan  distinguish  be- 
tween these,  —  that  we  can  recognize  our 
Divine  alliances.  The  human  mirror  has 
only  then  become  hopelessly  defective, 
when  it  confuses  these  eternal  distinctions  ; 
when  it  makes  wrong  appear  as  right,  and 
evil  as  good. 

Let  this  truth  sink  down  into  our  hearts 
as  a  living,  germinating  seed.  We  have  no 
human  capacity  which  is  unworthy  of  an 
immortal  development.  Whatever  power 
or  faculty  is  in  us  is  God-given,  and  may 
claim  a  share  in  His  eternity.  Were  it 
otherwise,  some  part  of  His  work  in  His 
creation  would  be  purposeless  and  vain. 


58  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

If  we  have  found  out  the  secret  of  our 
human  life  at  all  —  not  alone  in  what  we 
call  its  higher  reaches,  but  in  its  every-day 
experiences  —  we  have  found  that  its  hum- 
blest conditions  overflow  with  immortal 
meanings :  that  the  whole  of  it  is  "  hid 
with  Christ  in  God."  If  we  sincerely  pray 
that  His  Kingdom  may  come,  we  shall 
strive  to  do  His  will  in  all  the  common- 
place corners  and  lowly  chambers  of  our 
being,  as  well  as  in  its  widest  expanses  of 
free  and  joyous  aspiration. 

Especially  is  this  idea  of  heavenly  perma- 
nence applicable  to  our  affections.  Every 
outreach  of  life  to  life,  every  impulse  of 
this  God-born  nature  that  finds  its  joy  in 
giving  what  is  richest  and  sweetest  in 
its  own  being,  and  in  receiving  the  same 
from  other  beings,  is  and  shall  be  found 
by  the  purified  heart  to  be  as  holy  as  it  is 
human.  Earthly  desires  are  wrong  only  be- 
cause of  their  perversions  of  the  heavenly 
meaning  that  they  inclose.  The  earth  is 
still  the  Lord's,  though  it  mixes  itself  so 


The  Human  Mirror  59 

strangely  with  the  spiritual  in  our  thoughts  ; 
there,  out  of  its  own  depths,  crying  and 
struggling  painfully  upward,  longing  to  be 
released  from  the  bondage  of  evil,  and  to 
share  the  adoption  of  the  children  of  God. 

Our  sin  lies  in  yielding  the  higher  im- 
pulse to  the  lower ;  so  impeding  the  up- 
ward progress  of  the  creation  beneath  us, 
and  bringing  about  disorder  and  disinte- 
gration and  ruin  instead  of  harmonious 
union.  The  misery  and  the  horror  of  sin 
is  that  by  it  the  image  of  God  in  humanity 
becomes  defaced,  until  sometimes  it  seems 
wholly  obliterated.  We  speak  of  those  who 
have  given  themselves  up  to  their  animal 
impulses  as  brutal ;  but  that  is  an  insult  to 
the  brutes.  Man  cannot  sink  to  their  level 
without  degrading  himself  far  below  them. 
Through  his  higher  intelligence  he  becomes 
a  fiend. 

By  every  impulse  within  us,  we  were 
meant  to  ascend  to  the  heavenly  life. 
Every  human  affection,  could  it  take  the 
course  God  meant  for  it,  would  link  us  to 


60  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

the  angelic  and  the  divine  :  and  indeed,  it  is 
through  our  affections,  perverted  and  mis- 
placed as  they  often  are,  that  we  feel  most 
profoundly  our  immortality.  From  her 
deepest  intuitions  Love  declares  to  the 
beloved,  — 

"  Were  not  our  souls  immortal  made 
Our  equal  love  would  make  them  such." 

Emerson  grandly  says  :  "  Neither  is 
life  long  enough  for  friendship.  That  is  a 
serious  and  majestic  affair,  like  a  royal 
presence,  or  a  religion,  and  not  a  postil- 
ion's dinner,  to  be  eaten  on  the  run." 

The  word  "  passion "  has  been  so  mis- 
used and  degraded  that  we  scarcely  know 
it  except  in  its  lower,  earthlier  accepta- 
tion. But  passion  is  love  energized,  glori- 
fied with  utter  forgetfulness  of  self,  — 
with  an  intense  divine  necessity  of  giving 
itself  unreservedly  in  sacrifice  and  conse- 
cration to  that  which  it  loves.  Our  Lord's 
passion  has  made  the  word  a  sacred  one  to 
our  human  hearts.  By  that  passion  we 
have  learned  that  God-like  sacrifice  is  pos- 


The  Human  Mirror  61 

sible  to  our  humanity,  having  been  made 
real  in  a  life  like  our  own,  through  love 
that  was  stronger  than  death.  God,  in 
sparing  not  His  own  Son  for  our  sakes, 
has  revealed  to  us  that  the  innermost 
depth  and  the  uttermost  overflow  of  love 
are  essential  to  His  being,  and  must  there- 
fore be  so  to  ours. 

By  holy  human  character,  by  purity  and 
devotion  of  soul  like  Christ's,  and  by  these 
only,  is  the  purpose  of  God  in  our  creation 
made  known.  "  We  all,  with  open  face 
beholding  as  in  a  glass  the  glory  of  the 
Lord,  are  changed  into  the  same  image 
from  glory  to  glory,  even  as  by  the  spirit 
of  the  Lord." 

How  beautiful  it  would  be  to  live  in  a 
world  where  every  being  we  met  uncon- 
sciously revealed  in  look  and  word  and  ac- 
tion, in  the  slightest  gesture  and  movement, 
the  Divine  intention  in  his  creation  !  It 
is  because  little  children  do  so,  for  the  first 
brief  months  of  their  lives,  that  they  charm 
us  and  captivate  us.     And  it  is  in  the  sim- 


62  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

plicity  of  being  without  dissimulation,  and 
from  the  depth  of  our  souls,  just  what  we 
were  meant  to  be,  that  we  become  as  little 
children,  and  with  them  enter  into  the 
kingdom  of  heaven.  The  world  seems  to 
force  us  to  put  on  masks  and  veils,  —  to 
hide  what  is  most  real  in  us  behind  some 
conventional  caricature  of  ourselves.  But 
both  life  and  death  strive  with  us,  compel- 
ling us  to  show,  if  only  by  glimpses,  what 
we  truly  are,  as  the  children  of  God,  and 
mirrors  of  His  holy  nature. 

"  Often  from  the  depths  of  his  being  a 
man  gives  out  a  clear  image  of  what  he  is 
at  heart,  of  what  he  is  in  spirit,  though  his 
outward  life,  through  stress  of  circumstance, 
may  be  feeble,  broken,  or  discordant.  And 
beyond  this,  even  with  those  whose  whole 
soul  is  most  fully  expressed  in  their  out- 
ward life,  the  expression  is  at  best  only 
partial  and  prophetic  ;  there  is  always 
something  more  indicated,  intimated,  as 
the  innermost  beauty  and  goal  of  the 
spirit,  that  is  not  and  as  yet  cannot  be 


The  Human  Mirror  63 

expressed.  There  is  no  true  life  that  does 
not  reveal  a  purer,  a  richer  and  more 
blessed  life  visioned  in  its  depths,  seen 
like  lovely  grottoes  in  the  deep,  radiant 
with  light  beneath  a  heaving  and  a  broken 
surface.  Now  that  image  is  the  true  man, 
the  real  impress  and  outgoing  of  his  spirit ; 
and  when  mortality  takes  away  the  trou- 
bled setting  of  circumstance,  that  is  the 
spiritual  portrait  which  alone  remains  in 
our  hearts.  And  those  upon  whom  this 
spiritual  stamp  is  strongest  are  those  who 
when  parted  from  us  leave  their  real  image 
with  us,  and  as  already  caught  up  into 
heaven,  speak  to  us  of  where  they  are,  in 
the  look  of  angelic  beauty,  the  return  of 
immortal  youth,  on  the  face  of  the  dead 
who  die  in  the  Lord." 


VI. 


The  Blessed  Need. 

HERE  is  no  wider-spread  miscon- 
ception of  heaven  than  that  it  is  a 
place  where  all  our  wishes  will  be 
gratified.  We  criticise  loftily  the  Moham- 
medan's dream  of  a  sensual  paradise,  while 
our  own  thought  of  happiness  hereafter  is 
only  a  little  less  selfish.  It  is  the  mistake 
of  hearts  that  were  made  for  right  desires, 
and  that  ought  never  to  have  had  any 
other ;  but  from  that  perfect  condition, 
we  know  that  we  have  gone  very  far  astray. 
Our  wishes  have  become  our  chief  tempt- 
ers and  betrayers.  Almost  all  the  sorrow 
and  degradation  under  which  humanity 
groans  is  the  result  of  gratified  human 
desires,  consciously  or  unconsciously  per- 
verted into  inhuman  ambitions  and  pas- 
sions. 


The  Blessed  Need  65 

To  insist  upon  having  our  wishes  grati- 
fied, even  when  it  does  not  cause  depriva- 
tion and  injury  to  others,  involves  the 
dwarfing  of  ourselves,  the  starving  out  of 
our  diviner  aspirations.  Always  to  have 
our  own  way  is  not  a  blessing,  but  a  curse. 
The  indulged  child  is  the  spoiled  child, 
most  hopelessly  spoiled  in  that  he  at  last 
finds  no  satisfaction  except  in  self-indul- 
gence. The  children  of  Israel  refused 
bread  "from  heaven,  and  cried  out  to  God 
for  flesh  to  eat.  "And  He  gave  them 
their  request,  but  sent  leanness  into  their 
soul."  Scarcely  a  more  awful  retribution 
is  recorded  in  the  sacred  Book.  A  surfeit 
of  earthly  enjoyment  —  quails  preferred  to 
manna  —  and  spiritual  starvation  !  The 
result  is  no  less  dreadful  for  being  a  nat- 
ural sequence  of  events  ;  the  most  misera- 
ble state  of  the  soul's  health  is  when  it  has 
lost  its  relish  for  heavenly  food. 

Getting,  the  gaining  by  mere  accretion, 
is  of  the  earth,  and  pertains  to  lower  sub- 
stances or  growths,  as  rocks,  clay,  fungi, 


66  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

and  lichens.  As  things  ascend  and  live 
after  the  heavenly  fashion,  they  live  by  giv- 
ing themselves  away,  —  they  must  flow 
forth,  or  blossom,  or  radiate,  —  must  enter 
as  light  and  warmth  into  the  harder  na- 
tures beneath  them.  Getting  is  of  the 
earth  ;  giving  is  of  the  heavens. 

We  may  desire  both  knowledge  and  love 
selfishly.  Whatever  we  want  for  ourselves 
alone,  we  do  not  seek  in  the  heavenly  way. 
Friendship  may  be  to  us  merely  a  cut 
flower,  that  graces  our  banquet  for  a  day, 
and  then  dies  a  natural  death,  or  it  may  be 
a  live  plant,  daily  unfolding  its  blossoms 
with  sweetness  and  beauty  that  all  may 
share.  One  of  the  blessed,  unending  needs 
of  heaven  must  surely  be  the  need  of  giv- 
ing forth  into  other  lives  the  blessedness 
which  God  has  poured  into  ours. 

It  is  only  the  most  pitiable  of  heart 
poverty  that  feels  as  if  it  could  do  nothing 
to  add  to  the  happiness  of  other  lives,  and 
does  not  even  care  to  make  the  attempt. 
And  where  no  love  is  given,  the  life  shriv- 


The  Blessed  Need  67 

els  and  narrows  until  none  can  be  received. 
The  soul  itself  is  refreshed  and  enlarged 
by  the  stream  of  love  that  flows  through 
it  :  —  this  is  the  true  well  of  water  spring- 
ing up  within  unto  everlasting  life. 

Opportunities  come  reaching  out  their 
hands  to  us  every  moment,  —  not  to  do 
great  things,  perhaps,  but  for  the 

"little,  daily,  unremembered  acts 
Of  kindness  and  of  love," 

that  take  off  the  chill  from  our  undemon- 
strative, matter-of-fact  intercourse  with 
one  another,  and  keep  our  hearts  from 
starvation.  Who  does  not  know  what  it 
means  to  be  "  hungry  for  a  little  love  ? " 
Who  has  not  often  become  aware  that  he 
was  telling  God  of  his  heart-hunger,  rather 
than  of  any  physical  need,  while  he  re- 
peated the  words,  "  Give  us  this  day  our 
daily  bread  ?  "  And  even  when  we  have 
been  the  recipients  of  such  affection  as 
falls  naturally  to  almost  all  of  us,  has  it 
not  often  only  created  in  us  a  longing  for 


68  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

more  satisfying  food,  as  if  we  felt  that  at 
the  human  board  we  were  but  tasting 

"  Mere  crumbs  of  nourishment,  while  our  strong  hearts 
Are  shaping  ever  an  ideal  love, 
And  thirsting  for  a  sympathy  of  soul 
Which  angels  only  know  ?  " 

But  the  craving  for  affection  is  not  al- 
ways wholesome  ;  it  may  be  entirely  and 
miserably  morbid.  It  may  be  only  a  cov- 
etous outreach  after  a  blessing  which  be- 
longs to  another,  and  without  which  that 
other  life  must  be  left  wholly  unsunned 
and  unrefreshed.  The  heavenly  love  is  an 
immortal  flower :  no  deathly  blight  of  self- 
ishness can  creep  into  its  core.  Of  this, 
as  of  all  the  most  precious  things  God 
has  given  to  man,  our  hearts  make  no  mis- 
take in  assuring  us  that  "  it  is  more  blessed 
to  give  than  to  receive."  To  love  is  an 
eternal  need  of  the  soul  :  it  is  the  free  and 
spontaneous  giving  forth  of  our  inmost  and 
best.  To  be  loved  is  not  in  our  own  power  : 
it  may  come  to  us  as  the  reaction  of  our 
own   love    back  upon  ourselves,  or,  more 


The  Blessed  Need  69 

blessedly,  as  the  gracious  and  undeserved 
bestowal  of  Him  from  whom  cometh  down 
every  good  and  perfect  gift. 

M  Love  of  every  kind  is  God's  love."  In 
knowing  that  it  is  such,  human  love  be- 
comes most  sacred  and  solemn.  It  is  God's 
heart  that  throbs  in  ours  when  it  leaps  up 
within  us  at  the  sound  of  a  beloved  name, 
at  the  pressure  of  a  hand,  a  glance,  a  voice, 
a  presence  which  is  like  music  felt  along 
all  the  chords  of  our  being. 

"  As  he  hath  loved  us."  In  His  own 
glorious  way,  through  His  own  holy  inspi- 
ration, we  know  what  it  is  to  love  one  an- 
other. Like  His,  our  love,  when  it  is  true, 
is  no  self-seeking,  but  a  perpetual  giving. 
And  the  desire  to  bear  a  blessing  to  any 
soul  must  sooner  or  later  bring  us  near 
that  soul. 

There  is  a  passage  in  one  of  George 
MacDonald's  books  that  beautifully  em- 
phasizes this  thought :  — 

"  I  know  now  that  it  is  by  loving,  and 
not   by  being  loved,   that   one   can  come 


jo  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

nearest  the  soul  of  another :  yea,  that 
where  two  love,  it  is  the  love  of  each  other, 
and  not  the  being  beloved  by  each  other, 
that  originates  and  perfects  and  assures 
their  blessedness.  I  know  that  love  gives, 
to  him  that  loveth,  power  over  any  soul  be- 
loved, even  if  that  soul  know  him  not, 
bringing  him  inwardly  close  to  that  spirit ; 
a  power  that  cannot  but  be  for  good  ;  for  in 
proportion  as  selfishness  intrudes,  the  love 
ceases,  and  the  power  that  springs  there- 
from dies. 

"  Yet  all  love  will  one  day  meet  with 
its  return.  All  true  love  will,  one  day, 
behold  its  own  image  in  the  eyes  of  the 
beloved,  and  be  humbly  glad.  This  is  pos- 
sible in  the  realms  of  lofty  Death." 

And  possible  here  also.  For  the  breath 
of  blessing  that  goes  forth  from  our  life 
is  given  back  to  us  in  fragrance  from 
other  lives.  Love  creates  its  own  atmos- 
phere, and  is  its  own  heaven.  Who  can 
guess  how  the  air  of  earth  is  still  sweet- 
ened, as  with  ever-blooming  flowers,  by  the 


The  Blessed  Need  7/ 

loving  thoughts  that  loving  human  beings 
have  sent  forth  into  it  from  the  depths  of 
their  spirits  since  time  began  ?  Are  not 
faithfulness  and  self-sacrifice  well  worth 
what  they  cost  to  us,  if,  by  our  heart's 
blood,  we  may  but  water  the  plants  of 
heaven  on  earthly  soil,  for  the  refreshment 
of  generations  to  come  ? 

The  friends  who  have  been  truly  ours 
here,  we  must  find  in  the  hereafter,  for 
they  are  part  of  ourselves  :  our  life  and 
theirs  is  one,  and  is  "  hid  with  Christ  in 
God "  where  it  is  safe  forever.  But  not 
even  in  heaven  can  we  be  sure  of  at- 
tracting to  our  side,  whenever  we  will, 
those  whose  presence  we  most  desire.  We 
and  they  may  be  called  apart  on  widely- 
separated  embassies,  each  to  our  own  spe- 
cial and  peculiar  ministries,  there  as  here. 
And  we  shall  learn  to  love  each  other  bet- 
ter because  of  our  capacity  for  separate 
service.  When  we  do  meet,  it  will  be  to 
find  in  each  other,  through  our  new  expe- 
riences, an  unexplored   and  undreamed-of 


j2  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

region  of  God's  ever -widening  heaven. 
He  will  always  prepare  us  for  and  prepare 
for  us  our  work,  our  place,  and  our  com- 
panionships ;  and  our  deepest  mutual 
yearning  for  soul-communion  will  go  forth 
to  Him  forever  on  the  wings  of  the  prayer 
that  is  unceasingly  heard  in  heaven  — 
"  Thy  will  be  done  !  "  Never  can  we  be 
so  glad  in  anything  that  concerns  ourselves 
only,  as  in  yielding  our  desires  to  His  per- 
fect will. 

Slowly,  falteringly,  we  are  here  learning 
how  to  say  this  prayer  aright,  —  how  to 
ask  that  God's  will  may  be  done,  —  not 
merely  in  a  spirit  of  submission,  but  be- 
cause His  will  is  dearer  to  us  than  the 
dearest  and  deepest  wish  of  our  own 
hearts. 

"A  prayer  in  its  simplest  definition  is 
merely  a  wish  turned  Godward,"  one  has 
told  us.  The  same  earnest  thinker  says  : 
"  What  Christ's  prayer  was,  all  true  pray- 
ers must  be.  You  must  pray  with  the 
great  prayer  in  sight.     You  must  feel  the 


The  Blessed  Need  7? 

mountains  above  you  while  you  work  upon 
your  little  garden.  Little  by  little  your 
special  wishes  and  the  eternal  will  of  God 
will  grow  into  harmony  with  one  another. 
All  conflict  will  die  away,  and  the  great 
spiritual  landscape  from  horizon  to  horizon 
will  be  but  one.  That  is  the  prayer  of 
eternity —  the  prayer  of  heaven  —  to  which 
we  may  come,  no  one  can  say  how  near, 
on  earth." 

Yes  ;  when  we  say  "  Thy  will  be  done," 
we  are  praying  on  earth  as  they  pray  in 
heaven.  Up  towards  the  glory  of  infinite, 
ever-receding  summits  winds  the  path  of 
the  immortal  traveler.  Already,  on  these 
lower  ascents,  heaven  is  in  bloom  around 
us  ;  for  there  is  no  true  human  joy  that  is 
not  an  outgrowth  of  the  Holy  Will.  The 
peak  hidden  in  clouds,  and  the  cleft  of  the 
mountain-side  that  roots  the  timid  flower, 
are  formed  of  the  same  Eternal  Rock. 

"  The  hill  of  Zion  yields 

A  thousand  sacred  sweets, 
Before  we  reach  the  heavenly  fields, 
Or  walk  the  golden  streets." 


74  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

And  as  we  go  on,  we  shall  find  every 
wish  of  our  hearts  blossoming  into  a  prayer 
whose  fragrance  is  the  breath  of  the  one 
adorable  Will.  Our  little  lives  will  feel 
their  unity  with  the  all-surrounding,  all- 
pervading  Life,  in  being  at  one  with  God. 

It  is  not  our  wishes,  but  our  needs,  that 
God  wiU  eternally  satisfy.  Our  desires 
are  often  so  near  the  surface  that  they 
change  with  every  passing  current  of 
thought  ;  we  do  not  ourselves  know  what 
we  want  ;  and  we  get  only  a  little  brief 
sparkle  of  pleasure  from  their  gratification. 
But  our  needs  take  us  down  into  the  deep- 
est depth  of  ourselves,  —  into  those  re- 
cesses of  love  and  aspiration  and  resolve 
where  character  is  shaped,  —  into  the  veiled 
sanctuary  of  our  inmost  personal  being, 
where,  whether  we  have  ever  caught  a 
glimpse  of  His  glory  or  not,  we  know  that 
God  abides.  Our  highest  blessedness  it 
is,  that  we  have  immortal  needs,  —  needs 
which  require  eternity  for  their  fulfillment. 
Eternally  we  shall  need  to  be  taken  deeper 


The  Blessed  Need  75 

into  the  unfathomable  heart  of  God,  that 
we  may  learn  to  love  as  He  loves.  Eter- 
nally we  shall  need  to  pray  the  lofty  prayer 
of  Christ,  "  Thy  will  be  done  !  "  for  eter- 
nally the  mysteries  of  that  Will  which  is 
indeed  God  Himself  —  His  character  — 
His  personality  —  will  rise  as  inaccessible 
mountain-tops  above  us,  —  yet  as  heights 
towards  which  we  must  ever  ascend  to 
breathe  our  native  air. 
Tennyson  has  sung  of 

"  Tears  from  the  depths  of  some  divine  despair  ;  " 

and  there  is  a  despair  which  is  more  heav- 
enly than  any  attainment  ;  a  glimpse  of 
white,  unapproachable  Holiness  —  of  the 
Holy  One  himself  —  that  humbles  us  to 
the  dust  while  at  the  same  time  it  lifts 
us  up  and  draws  us  irresistibly  onward. 
Thank  God  that  we  shall  feel  this  holy 
despair  forever  !  —  that  we  shall  never 
come  to  any  level,  however  high,  where  we 
can  rest  in  ourselves,  and  feel  Him  no  longer 
above  us,  who  is  Himself  our  heaven ! 
By  the  aspiration  that  climbs  upward  and 


j6  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

unfolds  its  flower  toward  Him  more  glori- 
ously for  the  depth  of  humility  in  which 
it  is  rooted,  we  know  our  eternal  need  of 
Him.  We  know  that  we  shall  be  seeking 
Him  and  finding  Him  forever  and  forever, 
growing  into  His  infinity  as  it  heightens 
and  broadens  and  deepens  beyond  us. 

Never  can  there  come  a  time,  in  the  far- 
thest onward  reach  of  the  celestial  journey, 
when  a  living  soul  will  no  longer  hunger 
and  thirst  after  righteousness,  for  to  do  so 
is  to  hunger  and  thirst  after  God.  Angels 
and  archangels  must  stoop  beside  us  to  fill 
their  golden  chalices,  as  we  our  cups  of 
clay,  at  this  inexhaustible  Fountain.  To 
hunger  no  more  and  to  thirst  no  more  is 
but  to  have  our  ever-returning  need  per- 
petually satisfied  ;  and  from  the  overflow 
of  our  blessedness  to  become  wells  of  the 
water  of  life  to  other  souls. 

Blessed  be  God,  who  has  made  earth 
and  heaven  one,  in  the  heart's  unquench- 
able thirst  for  Him  ! 


VII. 


All  Things  are  Yours. 


f|pP|HAT  can  an  angel  regard  as  riches  ? 
~Wlh   Certainly  nothing  that  is  apprecia- 


ble by  our  mortal  senses,  —  not 
such  things  as  we  see  with  covetous  eyes, 
and  touch  with  miserly  hands,  and  lock 
away  from  thieves  in  tomb-like  coffers. 

Milton  has  drawn  for  us  a  fancy-sketch 
of  one  such  sordid  angel,  among  the  rebel- 
lious host : — 

"  Mammon,  the  least  erected  spirit  that  fell 

From  heaven,  for  even  in  heaven  his  looks  and  thoughts 

Were  always  downward  bent,  admiring  more 

The  riches  of  heaven's  pavement,  trodden  gold, 

Than  aught  divine  or  holy  else  enjoyed 

In  vision  beatific." 

But  the  messengers  of  God,  who  fly  abroad 
on  His  errands  through  the  universe,  can- 
not travel  with  their  winged  thoughts 
weighted   by   any   material   burden.      An 


j8  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

angel's  riches  are  the  messages  he  bears, — 
messages  of  love  and  truth  from  the  heart 
of  God  to  His  creatures.  The  messenger 
knows  that  he  is  the  bearer  of  inestimable 
wealth,  but  he  has  no  desire  regarding  it 
except  that  it  may  reach  its  destination, 
and  bless  the  souls  for  whom  it  was  in- 
tended. If  any  selfish  hoarding  of  truth 
and  love  were  possible,  the  truth  would 
turn  to  falsehood,  and  the  love  to  hate  — 
and  heaven  would  be  hell.  The  heavenly 
riches  must  be  given  away,  freely  as  the 
air  we  breathe,  or  it  is  no  longer  heavenly. 
Again  the  plural  gives  the  pronoun  its 
value.  "  All  things  are  yours."  We  are 
not  the  real  possessors  of  things  earthly  or 
heavenly,  while  we  persist  in  saying  "They 
are  mine ;  "  the  only  permanent  claim  we 
have  upon  them  is  that  they  are  ours.  God 
never  gives  us  anything  for  our  individual 
self  alone.  The  divineness  of  His  gifts  is 
proved  by  our  desire  to  share  them  with 
others.  It  is  only  perishable  objects  that 
we  can  hold  selfishly,  and  in  so  holding 
them,  they  and  we  perish  together. 


All  Things  are  Yours  yg 

The  Apostle  does  not  leave  anything 
out ;  —  the  friends  who  have  come  nearest 
to  our  spiritual  life,  —  the  things  that  live, 
and  the  things  that  die, — the  things  we 
have  now,  and  the  things  that  are  coming 
to  us  here  or  hereafter,  —  all  are  ours,  to 
be  held  as  God's  gift  through  Christ,  not 
by  any  exclusive  claim,  but  for  the  benefit 
and  blessing  of  others.  Nothing  is  ours 
for  hoarding  or  for  display  ;  all  things  are 
ours  to  share. 

But  what,  to  Saint  Paul,  was  the  meaning 
of  "  things  ?  "  Not  that  in  them  which  can 
be  touched  and  handled  ;  that  only  in  them 
which  is  spiritual,  or  which  symbolizes  the 
spiritual,  made  them  realities  to  him.  A 
soul  cannot  possess  anything  material :  its 
grasp  is  too  large :  the  material  slips  away 
from  it,  and  leaves  only  the  indestructible 
essence.  The  soul  of  man  can  possess  only 
the  soul  of  things.  That  is  why  the  rich 
man  is  often  so  poor,  he  only  owns  the 
outside  husks  of  things  ;  not  the  sweetness 
and  richness  of  their  life. 


80  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

The  rich  and  the  poor  alike  need  to  change 
their  estimate  of  values.  If  the  poor  man 
wants  the  rich  man's  nothings,  he  would  be 
no  better  off  for  having  them  than  the  mis- 
taken rich  man  who  thinks  they  are  some- 
thing. The  envious  poor  and  the  purse- 
proud  rich  are  in  a  state  of  equal  poverty. 
Every  accumulation  of  things,  merely  as 
things,  shuts  out  the  light  of  heaven  from 
the  soul.  If  the  rich  man's  possessions  are 
not,  to  himself  and  to  others,  a  medium  of 
spiritual  knowledge  and  love,  he  had  better 
scatter  them  abroad,  like  the  dust  they  are, 
to  mingle  with  their  kindred  dust.  If  the 
poor  man,  the  emptiness  of  whose  earthly 
condition  God  has  made  especially  favorable 
for  the  inflow  of  the  riches  of  faith,  would 
be  willing  to  exchange  his  faith  for  money 
or  houses  or  lands,  let  him  put  on  sackcloth 
and  ashes,  and  pray  that  his  eyes  may  be 
opened  to  see  what  are  the  true  riches ! 

Should  the  dreams  ever  come  to  pass, 
that  to-day  are  floating  in  the  air  around  us, 
of  a  time  when  earthly  conditions  shall  be 


All  Things  are  Yours  81 

equalized,  and  all  shall  share  evenly  in 
earthly  comforts,  luxuries,  and  opportuni- 
ties, men  will  perhaps  find  themselves  in 
an  earthly  Paradise,  but  it  will  not  be 
the  kingdom  of  heaven.  That  can  come 
only  in  the  souls  of  men,  in  loving  hearts 
and  righteous  lives.  The  dwellers  in  that 
kingdom  know  nothing  of  riches  or  pov- 
erty, except  as  they  are  revealed  by  char- 
acter. They  are  regarded  as  richest  who 
have  most  life  to  impart  to  others.  There 
are  no  poor  souls  in  heaven. 

Christ  pitied  rich  men  because  it  is  so 
hard  for  them  to  find  their  way  over  their 
heaped-up  wealth  into  the  kingdom  of  God. 
And  yet  we  see  around  us  many  who  have 
been  baptized  into  His  name  eager  to  be- 
come rich,  making  it  the  absorbing  purpose 
of  their  lives.  What  is  the  meaning  of 
their  baptism  to  them  ?  Do  they  remem- 
ber that  their  Master,  the  Son  of  Man,  had 
not  where  to  lay  His  head?  Has  He 
changed  His  opinion  regarding  riches,  to 
suit  the  changes  of  these  latter  days  ?   The 


82  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

poor  rich  man  who  went  away  sorrowful 
from  Christ  may  have  seen  how  worthless 
his  great  possessions  were  in  comparison 
with  the  Divine  friendship  he  craved,  and 
may  have  returned  with  joy,  scattering  his 
gold  among  the  suffering  poor  as  he  came. 
So  only  could  he  have  shown  that  he  was 
sufficiently  in  sympathy  with  the  lofty  na- 
ture he  had  approached,  to  become  his  dis- 
ciple. Yet  so  would  he  have  found  that  in 
having  nothing,  he  possessed  all  things. 
For  things  are  only  valuable  to  us  as  the 
instruments  of  spiritual  truth  in  shaping 
our  lives.  When  they  have  done  all  such 
service  as  they  can  for  us,  God  has  some 
finer  instrument  ready  for  the  finer  work 
that  is  required.  Sometimes  the  coarse 
instruments  are  wealth  and  luxury,  and  the 
fine  ones  poverty  and  discomfort. 

We  must  count  even  our  circumstances, 
whether  they  seem  favorable  or  the  oppo- 
site, among  "  all  things  "  out  of  which  we 
win  our  everlasting  inheritance.  The  Hand 
that  is  at  work  upon  us  knows  just  what 


All  Things  are  Yours  83 

discipline  our  nature  needs  to  mould  it 
anew  into  the  image  of  Christ,  and  we  can 
welcome  His  touch,  though  it  brings  disap- 
pointment, sorrow,  sickness,  or  death. 
Therefore, 

"  O  ye  that  faint  and  die,  arise  and  live ! 

Sing,  ye  whom  all  things  have  a  charge  to  bless 
If  He  is  faithful  who  hath  sworn  to  give, 
Then  be  ye  also  faithful,  and  possess  !  — 

"  Count  all  the  pains  that  speed  thee  to  thy  rest 
Among  the  riches  of  thy  purchased  right : 
Yea,  bind  them  in  His  name  upon  thy  breast 
As  jewels  for  the  Bride,  the  Lamb's  delight." 

"And  ye  are  Christ's."  Things  that  we 
hold  as  our  best  treasures,  we  value  most 
for  the  giver's  sake  :  and  to  this  gift  of  all 
things  is  added  the  name  of  Him  who  has 
given  us  all.  By  freeing  us  from  the  blind- 
ness and  the  fetters  of  sin,  by  saving  our 
souls,  He  has  saved  also  the  soul  of  all 
things  for  us.  The  marks  of  His  sacrifice 
are  upon  all  that  is  lasting  in  our  earthly 
possessions,  upon  all  that  is  grand  or  lovely 
in  nature,  and  upon  our  dearest  social  at- 


84  As,  it  is  in  Heaven 

tachments  and  home  affections.  He  has 
redeemed  them  from  the  moth  and  rust  and 
decay  of  mortality,  and  has  given  them 
back  to  us  as  heavenly  treasures.  We  hold 
the  whole  as  He  holds  it,  in  the  name  of 
His  Father,  God. 

It  is  a  holy  world.  There  is  nothing  in 
it  that  is  not  signed  with  the  sign  of  His 
cross,  that  is  not  baptized  into  the  eternal 
purity  of  His  consecration. 

We  are  commanded  not  to  love  the  world 
nor  the  things  that  are  in  the  world  ;  nor 
must  we  love  them,  as  things,  as  material 
and  perishable.  The  worldling  cares  for 
things  only  in  their  external  value  ;  the 
ascetic  cannot  see  that  they  have  any  other 
value.  One  would  accumulate  and  hoard 
them,  while  the  other  would  sweep  them 
all  away ;  ascetic  and  worldling  both  mak- 
ing the  same  mistake  ;  both  regarding  even 
human  love  and  home  affections  —  God's 
most  sacred  gifts  — as  of  the  earth,  and  to 
be  possessed  or  despised  at  will.  But  it  is 
not  earth,  it  is  earthliness,  that  we  are  to 


All  Things  are  Yours  85 

put  away  from  our  hearts.  He  has  made 
nothing  through  which  His  love  cannot  be 
breathed  upon  us,  through  which  our  grat- 
itude cannot  be  breathed  back  to  Him. 

"  Who  hates,  hates  Thee ;  who  loves,  becomes 
Therein  to  Thee  allied ; 
All  sweet  accords  of  hearts  and  homes 
In  Thee  are  multiplied." 

The  heart  that  appreciates  most  deeply 
the  beauty  and  the  richness  of  created 
things,  most  earnestly  prays, 

"  In  all  things  nothing  may  I  see, 
Nothing  desire  or  seek,  but  Thee !  " 

"  What,"  inquires  one,  "  is  Christianity  it- 
self but  living  to  the  whole  instead  of  living 
to  the  part  ?  It  gives  the  heart  Christ  in- 
stead of  self  for  its  spring  and  centre.  In 
the  meanest  things  of  every  day,  no  man 
liveth,  no  man  dieth  to  himself,  so  inwrapt 
and  interfolded  are  human  destinies  in  the 
continual  action  and  reaction  that  goes  on 
through  life.  The  Christian  is  one  who 
belongs  consciously  to  a  kingdom  in  which 
there  is  nothing  unrelated." 


86  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

Character  is  the  possession  that  seems 
most  exclusively  personal,  as  it  is  that 
which  distinguished  us  from  others  of  the 
race.  But  eve.n  in  that,  we  are  not  our 
own.  By  just  that  distinctiveness,  we  be- 
long to  the  rest.  By  just  that  difference 
in  us,  we  contribute  something  that  was 
lacking  to  the  whole.  And  how  much 
others  have  given,  to  make  us  what  we 
are  !  If  there  is  anything  good  or  true  or 
beautiful  in  us,  the  saints  and  the  poets 
and  sages  have  entered  our  lives,  and  have 
helped  to  develop  those  qualities. 

We  say  that  our  friends  are  everything 
to  us,  and  it  is  no  exaggeration,  if  we  have 
known  what  real  friendship  is.  They  are 
always  more  than  themselves  to  us.  They 
are  what  their  alliances  with  grander  na- 
tures than  ours  have  made  them.  We  are 
richer  for  all  the  goodness  they  have  loved, 
and  for  all  the  greatness  they  have  aspired 
to  share.  Our  friends  are  always  uncon- 
sciously giving  us  other  friendships,  in  giv- 
ing us  themselves. 


All  Things  are  Yours  8y 

In  heaven,  life  is  all  that  there  is  to  en- 
joy or  to  give.  Love  there  is  the  natural, 
unrepressed  interflow  of  life  between  soul 
and  soul.  The  longing  to  bless  and  the 
need  to  be  blessed  meet  each  other  on  the 
way  like  expectant  pilgrims,  and  giving  and 
receiving  are  an  equal  joy.  Character  re- 
cognizes what  is  nobler  than  itself,  and 
bows  itself  instinctively  before  the  superior 
nature  for  a  blessing  ;  or,  where  a  beseech- 
ing glance  is  met,  its  own  hand  is  ready  to 
bestow  benediction.  There  is  no  withhold- 
ing or  refusing  of  gifts,  for  only  what  be- 
longs to  another  is  offered  him.  It  is  the 
business  of  the  angels  to  find  for  their 
heavenly  bestowals  the  rightful  place. 
Love  and  Duty  sing  together  one  song,  and 
all  discords  subside  into  the  eternal  har- 
monies. This  we  know  is  true  of  heaven, 
because  it  is  true  of  the  heavenly  life  as  we 
have  seen  it  here.  We  have  known  angelic 
natures  on  earth,  and  have  received  from 
their  hands  treasures  which  cannot  be 
stolen  or  destroyed. 


88  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

All  things  are  ours.  We  need  not  wait 
for  heaven  until  we  die.  If  our  hearts 
would  but  open  to  receive  it,  the  kingdom 
of  God  would  be  within  us  now.  We  are 
heirs  together  with  Christ.  Have  we  not 
sometimes  caught  a  glimpse  of  our  immor- 
tal inheritance  ?  — 

"  O  awful  joy  !     O  life  divine ! 
O  bliss  too  great,  too  full ! 
Earth,  man,  heaven,  angels,  all  are  thine, 
And  thou  art  God's,  my  soul !  " 


VIII. 


The    Threefold  Cord. 

iO  TWO  imperfect  beings  can  form 
a  perfect  friendship.  But  let  them 
be  united  in  the  love  of  another,  a 
perfect  being,  —  there  is  but  One  such,  — 
and  their  friendship  is  firm  as  eternity. 
This  is  the  threefold  cord  which  is  not 
easily  broken.  Two  lives  which  depend 
only  upon  each  other  will  always  be  loosen- 
ing their  hold  and  slipping  apart  :  they 
must  feel  themselves  interwound  with  a 
stronger,  invisible  Life  before  they  can  be 
really  sure  of  each  other,  —  with  an  inde- 
structible uniting  substance  which  pene- 
trates their  mutual  affection,  and  makes 
it  enduring.  That  Substance,  that  Being, 
is  God. 

All  love  is  of  God.     Every  true  friend  is 
a    glimpse   of   God.      The    affection    that 


go  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

leaves  Him  out  loses  its  divinest  sweet- 
ness. No  friend  is  truly  known  or  loved 
until  loved  and  known  in  God. 

Adhesion  is  not  union.  To  claim  a  friend 
is  not  therefore  to  be  a  friend.  Friendship 
between  two  persons,  or  rather  the  bond 
that  they  call  friendship,  is  often  only  a 
doubled  selfishness.  They  wish  to  shut 
themselves  into  their  own  little  Paradise, 
and  to  shut  the  rest  of  the  world  out  of  it ; 
and  a  very  small  and  stifling  Paradise  it  is 
soon  felt  to  be,  by  one  or  the  other,  or  by 
both. 

Like  other  exiles  from  Eden,  human 
friendship  finds  its  healthiest  life  in  facing 
the  fierce  winds  of  the  desert,  and  in  win- 
ning from  a  rough  and  thorny  earth  the 
food  which  it  gladly  shares  with  all  fellow- 
wanderers.  Nothing  draws  us  so  close  to 
each  other  as  the  things  we  struggle  after 
together,  the  knowledge  that  is  to  be 
won  from  this  reticent  universe,  the 
great  interests  of  humanity  in  which  we 
forget    our    own    petty  wants    and  cares, 


The  Threefold  Cor  J  o/ 

and  the  ever  approaching  and  receding 
mysteries  of  the  heavens.  There  is  no 
sweeter  heart-growth  than  friendship  ;  but 
we  must  not  expect  that  this  loveliest  blos- 
som born  under  earthly  skies  will  flourish 
without  freedom  and  fresh  air. 

It  is  that  which  underlies  our  relation- 
ships which  makes  them  real  and  strong. 

"  How  were  friendship  possible  ?  "  asks 
Carlyle.  "  In  mutual  devotedness  to  the 
Good  and  True :  otherwise  impossible,  ex- 
cept as  armed  neutrality  or  hollow  com- 
mercial league."  Elsewhere  he  expresses 
the  same  sentiment  with  a  finer  shading  :  — 
"  Only  in  looking  heavenward,  take  it  in 
what  sense  you  may,  not  in  looking  earth- 
ward, does  what  we  call  union,  mutual  love, 
society,  begin  to  be  possible." 

The  reality  of  an  affection  is  best  tested 
by  its  power  of  going  beyond  a  single  ob- 
ject, and  giving  itself  to  the  whole. 

"The  love  for  one  from  which  there  doth  not  spring 
Wide  love  for  all,  is  but  a  worthless  thing." 

The  threefold  cord  has  not  shown  its  full 


g2  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

strength  until  it  has  wound  itself  around 
the  great  lonely  heart  of  humanity,  binding 
it  to  each  separate  heart,  and  drawing  all 
together  upward  and  homeward  :  — 

"  For  so  the  whole  round  earth  is  every  way 
Bound  with  gold  chains  about  the  feet  of  God." 

"  The  love  that  enlarges  not  its  borders, 
that  is  not  ever  spreading  and  including 
and  deepening,  will  contract,  shrivel,  decay, 
die.  .  .  .  That  we  are  the  sons  and  daughters 
of  God,  born  from  His  heart,  the  outcom- 
ing  offspring  of  His  love,  is  a  bond  closer 
than  all  other  bonds  in  one." 

"  In  God  alone  can  man  meet  man." 
Whoever  truly  loves  one  of  God's  chil- 
dren must  feel  his  heart  going  out  in  God- 
like tenderness  towards  all  the  rest.  In  all 
souls  he  recognizes  the  kindred  of  the  one 
soul  that  has  been  to  him  the  fullest  ex- 
pression of  humanity  and  of  God.  He 
who  really  loves  has  tasted  of  immortality. 
•  It  is  our  human  privilege  to  know,  even 
as  Christ  knew  it,  that  we  live  enveloped 
with  eternity  ;    that  it  enters  every  part 


The  Threefold  Cord  g$ 

of  our  nature,  through  root  and  bough  and 
remotest  leaf-bud,  making  our  whole  life 
eternal  life.  Thus  He  spoke  of  Himself  as 
"the  Son  of  Man  which  is  in  heaven,"  and 
thus,  truly  sharing  His  life,  we  may  and 
ought  to  feel  about  ourselves. 

We  are  here  to  develop,  through  our 
visible  relationships,  the  invisible  Life 
within  them  and  beyond  them,  and  so  make 
them  and  ourselves  true  unfoldings  of  the 
kingdom  of  heaven.  What  a  deep,  calm, 
holy  unity  would  enter  these  apparently 
fragmentary  and  entangled  lives  of  ours,  if 
our  souls  were  penetrated  with  the  con- 
sciousness of  what  is  true  regarding  them, 
that  they  are  already  lived  beforehand  for 
us,  in  the  heart  and  mind  of  God  ;  that  we 
have  only  to  follow  His  leadings,  and  not 
our  own  inclinations,  to  be  in  perfect 
peace  !  Heaven,  as  we  may  know  it  here, 
is  the  harmony  of  our  thoughts  with  the 
revelation  of  God's  thoughts  regarding  us. 
"  Our  thoughts  are  heard  in  heaven." 
And  our  feelings  are  felt  in  heaven  ;  our 


94  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

impulses,  our  desires,  our  deeds,  make  har- 
mony, or  cause  a  silence,  among  the  angel- 
choruses.  For  what  we  humanly  think, 
and  feel,  and  are,  is  indeed  but  our  re- 
sponse to  our  own  deeper  being,  to  the 
Life  in  which  we  are  embosomed,  and  of 
which,  as  an  eternal,  divine  conception, 
we  are  an  inseparable  part.  Our  own  sin 
can  tear  us  asunder  from  that  Life,  but 
nothing  else  can. 

Everything  was  planned  for  us  before 
our  entrance  into  humanity,  the  expected 
children  of  God.  Our  human  relationships 
were  already  heavenly  relationships,  be- 
fore we  knew  anything  about  them.  No 
family  or  national  tie,  no  sacred  social 
bond,  no  real  friendship  is  of  our  own 
seeking  and  planning ;  it  was  all  prepared 
for  us  in  the  beginning  by  the  Father  to 
whom  we  belong,  who  knows  our  needs  of 
body  and  soul  and  mind.  But  it  is  left  to 
us  to  discern  the  beauty  of  these  relations, 
as  they  are  unfolded  to  us,  to  take  every 
joy  that  one  life  can  impart  to  another  life  as 


The  Threefold  Cord  95 

the  touch  of  His  hand,  and  the  embrace  of 
His  love  ;  otherwise  we  lose  their  strength 
and  sweetness,  and  weave  about  our  daily 
path  a  network  of  mistake  and  bewilder- 
ment. 

We  all  belong  to  each  other,  but  friend- 
ship is  the  especial  accord  of  one  life  with 
a  kindred  life.  It  is  harmony  felt  at  the 
foundations  of  conscious  being,  not  obliter- 
ating personal  differences,  but  so  pervading 
both  natures  as  to  help  each  to  a  happier 
and  truer  expression  of  itself.  It  is  because 
they  are  what  they  are,  in  the  heavenly  life 
out  of  which  this  earthly  existence  unfolds, 
that  they  are  friends.  It  is  not  that  they 
seek  each  the  other,  but  that  God  sends 
each  to  the  other,  because  they  belong  to- 
gether. Should  they  never  meet  on  earth, 
should  they  even  be  unaware  of  one 
another's  existence  here,  somewhere  in 
God's  eternity  they  must  be  drawn  to- 
gether, because  they  are  one  in  Him. 

We  tremble  at  the  threshold  of  any  new 
friendship,  with  awe  and  wonder  and  fear 


g6  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

lest  it  should  not  be  thus  real  ;  or,  believing 
that  it  is,  lest  we  should  prove  ourselves 
unworthy  of  this  solemn  and  holy  contact 
of  life  with  life,  of  soul  with  soul.  We  can- 
not live  unworthy  lives  in  the  constant 
presence  of  noble  beings  to  whom  we 
belong,  who  believe  that  we  are  at  least 
endeavoring  after  nobleness.  This  is  our 
truest  loyalty  to  our  friends  :  loyalty  to  the 
God  who  has  been  revealed  to  us  through 
them.  The  heaven  by  which  we  are  sur- 
rounded never  draws  so  near  to  us,  never 
opens  upon  us  so  clearly,  as  through  the 
eye  and  the  voice,  through  the  heart  and 
the  being  of  a  friend.  Who  can  question 
the  personal  being  of  God,  when  the  most 
heavenly-minded  persons  we  know  are  only 
great  and  beautiful  to  us  because  they 
always  suggest  the  Presence  of  Some  One 
greater  and  purer  and  more  beautiful  than 
themselves,  —  some  diviner  Person  who  is 
their  inspiration,  —  to  whom  their  whole 
being  bows  in  allegiance  ? 

We   hold   only  sacred    relations   to  one 


The  Threefold  Cord  gj 

another.  To  be  unfaithful  and  unloving  is 
to  be  profane.  For  God  inhabits  the  sanc- 
tuary of  our  affections.  It  is  His  love, 
beating  in  our  hearts,  that  is  felt  by  those 
whom  we.  touch  with  the  lightest  finger- 
tips of  mercy  or  of  tenderness.  Whatever 
of  purity  or  of  truth  we  can  impart  to 
others,  is  wholly  of  His  inspiration. 

We  say  that  there  are  no  separations  in 
heaven  ;  neither  are  there  in  the  heavenly 
places  of  earth.  Time  and  space  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  soul.  "He  that 
is  joined  to  the  Lord  is  one  spirit " 
with  Him,  and  He  cannot  be  separated 
from  Himself.  The  prayer  of  Christ 
to  His  Father  for  His  friends  was  "  that 
they  may  be  one,  even  as  We  are  one." 
The  children  are  no  more  apart  from 
each  other  than  from  their  Father,  if 
they  are  lovingly  doing  His  will,  though 
they  may  seem  to  be  sundered  by  the 
width  of  continents  and  the  silence  of  the 
grave  itself. 

The  loftiest  test  of  friendship  —  under- 


g8  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

stood  as  companionship  —  is  the  power  to 
do  without  it.  And  in  this  world  of  ex- 
ternal confusions  and  separations,  there  is 
often  such  a  need.  We  do  not  yield  the 
friendship,  but  we  must  again  and  again 
forego  the  companionship.  Then  comes 
the  proof  of  our  capacity  for  sacrifice,  our 
loyalty  to  the  Highest  of  all.  We  turn  our 
faces  from  each  other,  but  never  our 
hearts,  and  walk  our  opposite  ways. 
Gradually  the  heavens  widen  and  deepen 
above  us  ;  we  find  ourselves  breathing  new, 
yet  strangely  familiar  atmospheres,  sweet 
with  the  breath  of  the  old  affection  ;  we  see 
ourselves — each  sees  the  other  —  met  once 
more  in  a  Presence  which  has  never  for- 
saken us,  —  the  presence  of  one  who  puts 
His  cross  into  the  hands  of  all  holiest 
friendship,  saying,  "  Conquer  by  this  !  " 

There  is  no  danger  of  losing  love,  here 
or  hereafter,  if  it  is  only  real ;  for  love  is 
the  one  indestructible  element  in  the  uni- 
verse. 

Jesus,  when  He  was  about  to  leave  his 


The  Threefold  Cord  gg 

disciples,  shared  with  them  the  sorrow  with 
which  they  received  the  announcement  of 
it,  knowing  that  they  could  not  understand 
it  as  He  did.  In  words  tremulous  with 
tenderness  He  tried  to  tell  them  that  He 
was  not  indeed  going  away  from  them,  — 
that  He  was  really  coming  nearer  to  them 
in  the  Spirit.  He  showed  them  that  they 
had  not  in  their  closest  daily  intercourse 
known  Him  truly,  except  as  they  had  drawn 
spiritually  near  to  Him  and  to  his  Father. 
Even  in  their  "  Lo  !  now  speakest  thou 
plainly,"  He  saw  that  there  was  no  clear  in- 
sight, —  that  they  could  only  learn  the  truth 
of  his  eternal  presence  with  them  through 
the  experience  of  apparently  losing  Him. 
And  so  all  that  even  He  could  do  was  to  turn 
to  His  Father  and  pray  for  them,  —  and 
then  lay  down  His  life  for  them  and  for 
the  world. 

"  As  I  have  loved  you,  that  ye  also  love 
one  another."  And  how  did  He  love  these 
friends  of  His  ?  Not  with  that  partial  affec- 
tion that  refuses  to  see  faults  and  errors, 


/oo  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

but  with  the  devotion  that  loves  in  spite  of 
them,  and  that  wins  the  mistaken  soul  to 
truth  by  imparting  its  own  wisdom  and 
fervor  and  faithfulness.  His  love  for  every 
one  of  those  separate  souls  was  enriched  by 
His  divine  grasp  of  all  souls  besides.  He 
saw  His  Father's  whole  family  in  each  of 
these  His  children  ;  and  so  to  us  also  His 
parting  charge  was  given,  "  Love  each 
other  as  I  have  loved  you." 

The  tenderness  that  we  feel  for  those  to 
whom  we  are  bound  by  natural  ties  is  only 
typical  of  the  deeper  union  which  exists 
between  those  who  are  kindred  in  soul, 
who  are  joined  to  each  other  through  sym- 
pathy with  God's  thoughts  for  us  all,  and 
in  working  with  Him  to  restore  His  scat- 
tered family  to  their  Father's  hearthstone. 
It  was  the  most  profound  love  for  Mary, 
and  for  the  family  of  Joseph  into  which  He 
had  been  born,  that  made  Jesus  say,  — 

"  Whosoever  shall  do  the  will  of  God, 
the  same  is  my  brother,  and  sister,  and 
mother." 


The  Threefold  Cord  101 

He  cared  for  His  family  as  he  cared 
for  the  thronging  souls  who  were  eagerly 
listening  to  His  words,  in  their  spiritual 
relationship  to  Him.  He  could  not  have 
loved  them  so  much,  if  He  had  not  loved 
His  Father  more. 

There  is  no  inspiration  like  that  we  re- 
ceive from  a  great  heart,  all-embracing  and 
self-forgetful,  in  echoing  whose  deep  throb- 
bings  our  own  forget  every  want,  even  to 
the  craving  for  a  recognition  and  response 
from  that  very  heart.  The  best  proof  of 
our  love  for  a  large,  unselfish  nature  is  that 
we  are  growing  larger  and  more  unselfish 
ourselves.  In  friendship  we  often  feel 
that  it  is  more  blessed  to  receive  than 
to  give,  to  take  the  richness  of  the 
higher  nature  which  we  revere  into  our 
own,  conscious  that  we  have  nothing  in 
ourselves  to  give  back,  except  our  grati- 
tude and  loving  appreciation.  It  is  in 
this  way  that  we  obtain  our  best  spiritual 
education  ;  — 


W2  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

"  And  what  delights  can  equal  those 
That  stir  the  spirit's  inner  deeps, 

When  one  that  loves,  but  knows  not,  reaps 
A  truth  from  one  that  loves  and  knows  ?  " 

It  is  like  the  sunshine  and  the  rainfall 
upon  the  thirsty  flowers,  developing  the 
common  life  of  all,  and  the  separate  life  of 
each. 

That  large  expression  of  the  Apostle's, 
"The  love  of  God  is  shed  abroad  in  your 
hearts  through  the  Holy  Ghost,"  may  be 
applied  to  a  pure  and  strong  human  friend- 
ship, that  flows  into  our  souls,  as  all  truest 
love  does,  to  flow  forth  again  in  blessing 
upon  other  souls.  To  try  to  hoard  love, 
to  shut  the  affluent  stream  in  upon  our 
narrow  boundaries,  is  only  to  bring  stag- 
nation into  our  being,  and  to  force  the  rich 
current  away  through  other  channels, 
where  it  may  quench  the  thirst  of  a  more 
grateful  soil. 

"As  I  have  loved  you."  With  a  love 
that  blossoms  with  holy  sweetness  on 
earth    because    its    roots    are   fed    by    the 


The  Threefold  Cord  103 

power  of  an  endless  life :  with  a  love  that 
is  to  expand  forever  in  the  light  of  God's 
smile,  taking  into  itself,  as  it  grows,  the  life 
of  all  His  worlds,  and  filling  the  universe 
with  its  ineffable  fragrance.  The  sorrow- 
ing poet  may  well  say,  looking  onward  into 
the  heavens  after  a  beloved  one  who  has 
gone  before,  that  he  feels 

"  Less  yearning  for  the  friendship  fled, 
Than  some  strong  bond  which  is  to  be." 

We  must  wait  patiently  for  many  bless- 
ings that  we  now  most  deeply  desire  :  but 
we  may  every  day  strengthen  our  friend- 
ships by  a  more  thoughtful  human  faithful- 
ness and  a  diviner  consecration,  — 

"  Until  we  close  with  all  we  love, 

And  all  we  flow  from,  soul  in  soul." 

"  In    whatever    relates    to    the    higher 

human  affections,  every  true  heart  discerns 

that  their  spirit   infinitely  transcends  the 

life  we  give  them  ;  and  Faith  argues  that 

God,  who  leaves  nothing  unfulfilled,  means 

to  bring  out  of  them  all  the  beauty  which 

their   own   nature  contains."     "Our   spir- 


104  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

itual  life  is  all  prophetic,  and  what  is  yet 
unfulfilled  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven  within 
us.  Men  of  deep  hearts  know  this  in  the 
failures  of  expression.  Their  words  and 
tones  have  unfathomable  meanings." 

We  know  but  little  of  what  we  really 
are  to  one  another.  "  Man  cannot  utter 
it."  There  are  no  words  in  any  human 
vocabulary  to  express  what  friend  may  be 
to  friend,  even  in  this  earthly  life.  It  is 
best  revealed  through  the  warm,  palpita- 
ting, fathomless  silence  of  love  —  the  love 
of  God,  in  which,  as  if  we  were  but  one 
heart,  we  are  all  together  enfolded. 


IX. 

Bridegroom  and  Bride. 


jf£$]S  it  true,  that  the  relation  between 
human  beings  which  we  regard  as 
the  perfect  ideal  relation,  is  not  to 
be  continued  beyond  this  life  ?  It  is  the 
Sadducee  in  us  that  asks  —  the  skeptic  who 
cannot  comprehend  the  spirituality  of  hu- 
man ties  —  who  considers  the  external  and 
visible  bond  as  the  only  real  one.  That 
which  binds  earth  to  earth  must  end  with 
the  earth  :  that  which  unites  spirit  to  spirit 
is  of  the  Spirit ;  the  interflow  of  Love 
which  is  in  its  nature  eternal.  This  love, 
in  which  all  human  life  is  one  with  God, 
which  joins  us  to  Him  and  to  one  an- 
other as  spiritual  beings,  in  companion- 
ships and  groups  and  close  friendships, 
may  blend  one  spirit  with  another  spirit 
more   intimately   still ;    so  closely  that    it 


io6  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

will  seem  as  if  there  were  but  one  con- 
scious life  -  throb  in  the  twain  thus  united. 
So  may  angel  be  wedded  to  angel  in  the 
resurrection.  Such  marriages  are  not  un- 
imaginable, but  most  probable  and  na- 
tural. All  things  else  around  us,  all  cir- 
cumstances and  conditions,  are  symbolic 
of  something  similar  to  themselves  which 
yet  is  higher  than  themselves ;  all  seem 
waiting  to  unfold  their  holier  hidden  mean- 
ing. This  strongest  human  tie  of  all  must 
point  to  something  like  itself,  beyond  itself  ; 
more  glorious  and  more  permanent. 

We  may  picture  to  ourselves  the  beauty  of 
a  celestial  union  like  this,  as  if  two  separate 
rills  of  love,  flowing  from  hidden  sources 
in  the  heart  of  God,  found  themselves  ap- 
proaching each  other,  sparkling  in  the  light 
of  His  smile,  and  blending  themselves  in 
one  shining,  musical  current,  to  swell  the 
"  pure  river  of  the  water  of  life,  clear  as 
crystal,"  which  nourishes  all  sweet  and 
wholesome  and  immortal  growths.  Blessed 
are  the  pure  in  heart  !    for   through   their 


Bridegroom  ami  Bride  loy 

lives  may  glide  in  beauty,  even  on  earth, 
that  river  of  holiness,  "  proceeding  out  of 
the  throne  of  God  and  of  the  Lamb."  It  is 
the  joy  of  all  true  love,  none  the  less  a  joy 
for  its  unconsciousness,  that  it  is  a  flowing 
stream  ;  that  it  imparts  its  vitalizing  re- 
freshment to  the  thirsty,  outreaching  fibres 
of  other  lives. 

There  is  no  sadder  possibility  on  earth 
than  that  two  human  hearts  should  pass  a 
life-time  together,  holding  love  and  mar- 
riage only  in  their  mortal,  selfish  signifi- 
cance. If  marriage  shuts  two  beings  in  ex- 
clusively upon  each  other,  it  is  because  they 
are  too  small  to  receive  the  great  gift  which 
their  union  might  have  been  to  tlnsm.  Sun- 
beam marries  sunbeam  that  there  may  be 
more  splendor  and  warmth  in  the  world. 
Soul  rushing  to  blend  with  soul,  each  lumi- 
nous with  love,  must  radiate  the  light  and 
the  joy  which  each  has  received  from  the 
other.  In  moments  when  the  heart  is 
filled  to  overflowing  for  the  one  best  be- 
loved, there  is  an  almost  infinite  enlarge- 


108  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

ment  of  the  whole  conscious  being,  a 
feeling  as  of  warm  oceanic  currents  going 
forth  to  touch  the  shores  of  other  lonelier 
lives,  a  divine  necessity  for  sharing  with 
other  souls  a  blessedness  too  great  for  one 
life  to  contain.  And  such  love  often  proves 
itself  capable  of  the  loftiest  sacrifices. 

Perhaps  one  of  the  best  interpretations 
of  our  Lord's  words  concerning  marrying 
and  giving  in  marriage  is  that  of  Brown- 
ing, through  the  lips  of  his  dying  Pompi- 
lia :  — 

"  Marriage  on  earth  seems  such  a  counterfeit, 

Mere  imitation  of  the  inimitable  : 

In  heaven  we  have  the  real  and  true  and  sure. 

'T  is  there  they  neither  marry  nor  are  given 

In  marriage,  but  are  as  the  angels  :  right, 

Oh,  how  right  that  is,  how  like  Jesus  Christ 

To  say  that !     Marriage-making  for  the  earth, 

With  gold  so  much,  —  birth,  power,  repute  so  much,— 

Or  beauty,  youth,  so  much,  in  lack  of  these  !  — 

"Be  as  the  angels  rather!  who,  apart, 

Know  themselves  into  one,  are  found  at  length 

Married,  but  marry  never,  no,  nor  give 

In  marriage  :  they  are  man  and  wife  at  once, 

When  the  true  time  is." 


Bridegroom  and  Bride  109 

In  the  "  Light  of  Asia,"  Siddartha  says 
to  Yasodhara,  foreseeing  that  he  must  go 
away  from  her  for  the  world's  sake  :  — 

"  Yet  kiss  me  on  the  mouth,  and  drink  these  words 
From  heart  to  heart  therewith,  that  thou  mayest  know 
What  others  will  not,  that  I  loved  thee  most 
Because  I  loved  so  well  all  living  souls." 

The  highest  natures  can  be  satisfied  with 
nothing  less  than  this  self-forgetting,  spiri- 
tual relation.  And  the  truest-hearted  will 
live  soberly  together  in  their  wealth  of  hu- 
man happiness,  — 

"  Foreseeing  that  fair  love  which  doth  not  feed 
On  fleeting  sense,  that  life  which  knows  no  age, 
That  blessed  last  of  deaths  when  Death  is  dead :  "  — 

no  empty  Nirvana,  but  conscious,  eter- 
nal oneness  with  the  loving  life  of  the  liv- 
ing God. 

It  is  sacrilege  to  hold  love  or  marriage 
as  mere  earthly  relations,  and  as  having 
nothing  to  do  with  our  relations  to  God. 

"  That  man  knows  little  either  of  love  or 
of  religion  who  imagines  they  ought  to  be 
kept  apart.     Of  what  sort  is  either,  if  unfit 


no  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

to  approach  the  other  ?  Has  God  decreed, 
created  a  love  that  must  separate  from 
Himself  ?  Shall  not  love  to  the  heart  cre- 
ated lift  up  the  heart  to  the  Heart  creat- 
ing ?  Alas  for  the  love  that  is  not  trea- 
sured in  heaven !  for  the  moth  and  the 
rust  will  devour  it.  Ah,  these  pitiful  old 
moth-eaten  loves  ! " 

And  alas  for  a  love-literature  too  well 
known  among  us,  light  and  flimsy  indeed, 
when  not  coarsely  false  in  its  treatment  of 
the  most  sacred  relations !  How  can  it 
help  in  developing  human  character,  or  in 
shaping  communities  into  stable  founda- 
tions for  the  kingdom  of  heaven  ? 

The  Sadducee  believes  only  in  this  world, 
and  so  can  comprehend  nothing  beyond  its 
mortal  relationships.  He  knows  nothing 
of  the  eternal  sanctities  of  being.  The 
bridal  truth  has  its  roots  down  deep  in  the 
unexplored  abysses  of  God.  In  the  perfect 
time  foretold  by  prophecy,  the  land  itself 
is  said  to  be  married.  And  to  Zion  it  is 
declared:  "Thy  Maker  is  thy  husband." 
M 


Bridegroom  and  Bride  in 

When  the  Apostle  seeks  for  a  suggestion 
of  the  mystical  union  between  Christ  and 
the  Church,  marriage  is  the  holiest  symbol 
he  can  find.  The  City  of  God  on  earth, 
the  New  Jerusalem,  is  compared  to  "  a 
bride  adorned  for  her  husband."  Perhaps 
it  would  not  be  far  from  the  truth  to  say 
that  heaven  itself  is  marriage.  It  is  one 
vast  union  of  souls  with  God.  The  new 
heaven  and  the  new  earth  will  at  last  meet 
and  know  themselves  one  ;  that  will  be  the 
bridal  day  of  eternity. 

It  is  unutterably  sad  to  see  how  this  love- 
liest thought  of  God  for  His  children  is 
everywhere  cheapened  and  defiled.  No 
one  can  believe  in  a  holy  God  who  does 
not  believe  in  the  holiness  of  faithful  hu- 
man love.  Yet  not  all  who  comprehend 
best  the  marriage-mystery  have  accepted 
the  earthly  bond.  They  are  too  well  aware 
of  its  inadequacy,  of  the  rareness  of  the  real 
experience.  But  in  their  hearts  is  ever  un- 
folding the  beauty  of  an  immortal  Beulah. 
They  do   not   withdraw   themselves   from 


.12  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

other  lives  ;  their  family-ties  are  universal, 
and  closer  and  more  gracious  and  tender 
for  their  own  especial  denials.  Through 
every  inmost  seclusion  of  their  being  is 
heard  the  voice  of  the  Heavenly  Bride- 
groom, the  answer  of  His  consecrated 
Bride.  Such  souls  live  for  the  regeneration 
of  earth,  and  beauty  and  truth  and  righteous- 
ness spring  up  around  them  in  living  forms. 
Childhood  and  youth  gather  to  them  for 
inspiration  ;  and  older  and  wiser  ones  feel 
their  life  renewed  through  them,  as  from 
fountains  unfailingly  fresh. 

The  true  fathers  and  mothers  of  the  race 
are  not  always  those  through  whom  mortal 
birth  is  received.  "  More  are  the  children 
of  the  desolate  than  the  children  of  the 
married  wife,  saith  the  Lord."  The  dreari- 
est orphanhood  is  not  always  among  earth's 
poor.  It  is  often  found  in  the  houses  of  the 
rich,  where  parents  suffocate  their  own 
souls  and  the  souls  of  their  children  with 
pleasures  and  luxuries  ;  where  the  little  ones 
find  nothing  to  remind  them  of  their  Father 


Bridegroom  and  Bride  113 

in  heaven.  Whether  it  is  spiritual  or  phy- 
sical starvation  that  claims  our  aid,  God  has 
made  it  the  privilege  of  every  man  and 
woman  to  share  in  His  loving  parentage. 
We  may  all  take  to  our  hearts  and  com- 
fort and  nourish  and  educate  His  neglected 
children. 

"To  be,"  it  has  been  said,  "is  to  be  in 
relations."  There  is  no  such  thing,  spiri- 
tually, as  living  apart  and  alone.  To  sepa- 
rate ourselves  wholly  from  human  beings 
is  to  separate  ourselves  from  God,  and 
that  is  death.  Self  disintegrates  :  love 
unites.  Our  family  and  social  ties  — 
brotherhood,  sisterhood,  neighborhood,  citi- 
zenship —  take  us  back  to  one  organic  cen- 
tre in  marriage,  the  mystical  bond  wherein 
God  unites  humanity,  through  all  its  tribes 
and  races,  to  Himself.  Whoever  holds  a 
low  ideal  of  marriage  does  not  believe  in 
the  sanctity  of  his  own  being.  In  it  our 
human  lives  are  rooted,  and  apart  from  it 
we  have  no  conscious  existence.  All  that 
is  best  in  us.  from  our  earliest  breath,  bios- 


ii4  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

soms  and  ripens  out  of  its  inner  sacred 
sweetness,  and  what  part  it  may  have  in 
shaping  our  future  heavenly  relations,  we 
wait  to  learn.  We  are  each  human  because 
we  each  belong  to  the  Whole ;  and  the 
whole  of  humanity,  as  if  it  were  one  being, 
is  at  last  to  be  spiritually  united  to  God, 
purified,  perfected,  without  blemish  or  spot. 

"  It  is  a  great  mystery,"  this  inter- 
blending  of  life  with  Life,  of  humanity  with 
God.  We  could  not  comprehend  it  at  all, 
except  through  His  coming  close  to  us  in 
One  who  is  the  perfect  revelation  of  Him- 
self, "  the  brightness  of  His  glory,  and  the 
express  image  of  His  Person."  Entering 
into  His  love,  the  love  of  Christ  our  Lord, 
we  are  drawn  towards  each  other  in  holy 
union  and  communion,  and  we  begin  to 
learn  the  deep  meaning  of  His  words  — 
"  That  they  may  be  one,  even  as  We  are 
one." 

Christ  and  His  Church  are  one  Life. 
The  Bride,  the  Church,  is  humanity  regen- 
erate, redeemed,  as  she  will  be  when  she 


Bridegroom  and  Bride  115 

has  clothed  herself  in  the  white  robes  of 
her  Lord's  righteousness.  But  now  she 
sees  very  dimly  the  grandeur  of  her  des- 
tiny, the  glory  of  unutterable  Love  and  Life 
and  Light  that  awaits  her.  The  Bride- 
groom, in  awakening  her  to  her  spiritual 
possibilities,  draws  her  ever  nearer  to  Him- 
self. He  is  patient  with  her  indifference 
and  her  waywardness,  for  He  is  sure  of 
bringing  her  home  to  His  Father's  house 
at  last. 

Listen !  Already,  through  the  dreary 
noises  of  the  world's  wilderness,  she  hears 
His  voice,  and  answers !  The  Bride  is 
making  herself  ready. 

"  Blessed  are  they  who  are  called  to  the 
marriage-supper  of  the  Lamb." 


X. 


Forever  Young. 


MM 


HO  would  not  be  young  forever? 
It  is  a  proof  of  our  immortality 
that  we  dread  growing  old.  Old 
age  and  death  are  of  this  world  only  :  there 
is  nothing  of  heaven  in  them.  But  they 
only  mean  the  wearing  out  of  our  earthly 
garments  ;  the  heavenly  life  within  knows 
neither  destruction  nor  decay.  Youth  is 
in  itself  an  ecstasy ;  the  joy  of  conscious 
life,  strength,  and  growth.  But  in  the 
physical  experience  we  have  only  a  hint  of 
what  it  really  is.  There  would  be  small 
satisfaction  in  living  on  indefinitely,  an  un- 
thinking, rosy,  well-fed  animal.  Plotinus 
was  not  far  astray  in  thanking  the  gods 
that  his  soul  was  not  tied  to  an  immortal 
body.  A  spirit  may  well  rejoice  to  wear  out 
and  lay  aside  the  clothes  he  has  outgrown, 


Forever  Young  nj 

whatever  childish  delight  he  may  once  have 
taken  in  them. 

For  what  is  the  greatest  happiness  of 
youth  ?  The  full  possession  and  free  use 
of  all  our  powers  in  elasticity  and  overflow. 
But  not  this  alone.  Youth  would  be  a  poor 
and  tame  experience  without  its  "  long, 
long  thoughts."  It  is  richer  in  the  future 
than  it  is  in  the  present.  The  landscape 
around  it  is  gladdest  in  the  visionary  beck- 
oning of  "  a  fair,  long  Paradise  beyond  the 
mountains."  Its  deepest  joy  is  in  its  seem- 
ingly illimitable  possibilities.  And  this  is 
the  very  essence  of  its  spiritual  meaning. 
We  are  old,  we  are  ready  to  die,  —  nay,  we 
are  already  dead,  —  when  we  see  nothing 
before  us  worth  striving  after.  It  is  the 
forward  look  of  the  soul  that  keeps  her 
forever  young. 

Youth  is  not  merely  a  lovely  phase  of 
the  transient  years  ;  it  is  a  pervading  qual- 
ity of  character  ;  a  light  in  itself,  and  an 
inspiration  to  all  surrounding  lives.  It  is 
a  perennial  freshness  at  the  roots  of  being  ; 


n8  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

and  its  glow  of  contagious  life  shines  out 
often  most  radiantly  beneath  gray  hairs  and 
a  wrinkled  forehead.  The  tree  that  has 
ripened  its  fruit  through  many  seasons 
bursts  into  a  spring  -  blossoming  just  as 
fresh  and  fragrant  as  that  which  unfolds 
from  the  half-grown  sapling  at  its  side. 
There  are  infinite  beginnings  bourgeoning 
out  continually  from  what  seems  to  us  the 
end.  While  we  live  in  the  inspiration  of 
these,  wherever  and  whatever  else  we 
may  be,  we  are  young.  How  can  mortal 
age  or  youth  disturb  the  thoughts  of  an  in- 
habitant of  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  in  the 
presence  of  Him  who  is  at  once  the  Child 
that  is  born  to  us,  and  the  Ancient  of 
Days  ;  the  Root  and  the  Offspring  ;  the 
Beginning  and  the  End  ;  the  Morning-Star 
of  every  soul  ? 

This  lovely  heart-freshness  that  we  call 
youth  is  the  fiatural  flowering-forth  of  spir- 
itual being.  It  is  born  of  the  beauty  of 
holiness,  and  sparkles  forever  with  the 
morning-dew  of  immortality.     Under  sin- 


Forever  Young  119 

less  skies,  clearer  vistas  will  open  upon  the 
released  soul,  as  it  starts  with  renewed 
vigor  upon  its  unending  pilgrimage.  Its 
joy  will  spring  up  like  a  flower  to  drink  in 
the  wonder  of  unknown,  uplifted  horizons, 
the  grandeur  of  a  forever-opening  Beyond. 
It  will  grow  younger  for  the  very  bound- 
lessness of  its  outlook. 

Infinite  hope  is  eternal  youth.  On  the 
loftiest  heights  we  shall  behold  summits 
sublimely  beckoning  us  higher  still,  and 
our  feet  will  ascend  them,  shod  with  an- 
gelic strength.  Entering  into  the  most 
dazzling  glory  that  allures  us  onward,  we 
shall  see  dawning  through  it  "  a  finer  light 
in  light,"  and  our  sight  will  be  deepened  to 
bear  the  intensity  of  the  unutterable  vision. 
And  through  the  tenderest  warmth  of  celes- 
tial love  that  enfolds  us  will  ever  throb  a 
pulse  of  dearer  and  more  spiritual  tender- 
ness that  will  win  our  hearts  to  meet  and 
blend  with  it  in  a  purer  beating  and  a  ho- 
lier aspiring,  forever  and  forever. 

One  chief  delight  of  youth  on  earth  is 


120  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

growth  ;  to  learn  the  meaning  of  ourselves, 
and  to  live  out  God's  purpose  in  us.  Jesus 
Christ  himself,  we  may  say  with  reverence, 
came  to  a  knowledge  of  his  own  divine 
secret  by  just  such  means  as  those  by 
which  we  come  to  understand  life  and  our- 
selves, by  living  and  learning  and  grow- 
ing. He  would  not  truly  have  assumed  our 
nature,  if  he  had  not  taken  it  as  it  is,  with 
its  ignorances  and  its  limitations.  There 
is  every  evidence  that  from  childhood  he 
was  wondering  at  himself  and  testing  him- 
self. He  knew  that  his  Father's  life  was 
within  his  own  in  some  mysterious  way, 
full  of  gloriously  unfolding  import  for  man- 
kind. But  who  he  himself  was  he  learned 
gradually,  as  any  infant  learns  that  it  is  a 
human  being,  as  any  boy  grows  into  a 
realization  of  his  manhood. 

When  his  mother  reproached  him  for 
staying  behind  at  Jerusalem,  to  listen  to 
the  rabbis  in  the  temple,  and  to  ask  them 
questions,  —  his  mother,  whose  love  must 
often  have  overflowed  towards  her  wonder- 


Forever  Young  121 

ful  son,  with  the  things  she  had  pondered 
of  him  in  her  heart,  —  his  answer  was  a 
gentle  remonstrance  :  "  Wist  ye  not  that  I 
must  be  about  my  Father's  business  ?  "  as 
if  he  would  say :  "  Why,  those  wise  men 
were  talking  of  my  Father.  I  thought  yoa 
would  understand  that  I  must  linger  where 
anything  was  to  be  learned  about  Him,  and 
about  what  He  wishes  me  to  do."  So  he 
grew,  increasing  in  wisdom  and  stature, 
until  he  came  to  the  full  consciousness  of 
his  own  divine  life,  and  to  the  complete  ex- 
pression of  the  divine  power  through  his 
human  faculties.  To  his  perfect  develop- 
ment none  of  us  approaches,  except  at  an 
immeasurable  distance  behind  ;  that  we  do 
not  and  cannot,  implies  an  eternity,  in  pros- 
pect. 

Jesus  Christ  went  away  from  this  mortal 
life  a  young  man,  but  he  had  borne  the 
flower  and  the  fruit  of  his  human  being  at 
once.  Men  spoke  of  him  as  if  they  thought 
he  might  have  been  almost  fifty  years  old. 
The   burden  he    carried    might  well    have 


122  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

made  him  seem  prematurely  aged.  Physi- 
cally, he  was  weary  and  worn.  But  on  the 
Mount  of  Transfiguration,  his  disciples  saw 
Him  as  He  really  was,  radiant  from  within 
with  unchangeable,  immortal  youth. 

So,  when  we  think  of  the  friends  who 
have  gone  from  us  into  the  unseen,  having 
passed  through  many  changes  in  their  phy- 
sical lineaments  from  youth  to  old  age,  — 
we  do  not  see  these  changes  ;  our  vision  is 
of  themselves,  in  the  fresh,  full,  unhindered 
expression  of  all  that  was  best  and  most 
real  in  them.  The  soul  is  always  young, 
and  the  heavenly  form  is  the  true  revela- 
tion of  the  soul.  Even  here,  we  know  our 
friends  far  less  by  their  physical  peculiari- 
ties than  by  this  subtle,  unconscious  reve- 
lation of  themselves  that  we  call  "expres- 
sion." As  the  life  deepens  and  is  purified, 
it  becomes  transparent  to  loving  eyes,  and 
its  early  freshness  and  its  later  ever-in- 
creasing richness,  its  simplicity  and  its 
wisdom  are  one,  in  the  character  of  the 
person  we  hold  dear.  This  is,  and  is  to  be, 
the  youth  of  immortality. 


Forever  Young  12} 

What  are  the  things  we  most  dread  to 
lose  with  youth  ?  Enthusiasm,  eagerness 
to  learn  what  truth  is,  and  to  try  our 
strength  upon  unfolding  tasks  ;  the  free, 
unhindered  use  of  ourselves.  The  first  of 
these  we  need  not  forego  ;  the  noblest  of 
our  race  have  felt  their  inward  stir  to  great 
endeavor  until  the  day  of  their  death  :  and 
if  we  have  enlarged  and  strengthened  our 
spiritual  powers  as  the  physical  have  weak- 
ened, there  is  no  real  loss  of  the  last,  but 
an  eternal  gain.  We  cannot  tell  how  much 
we  may  yet  have  to  do  for  this  dear  old 
confused  and  confusing  world  where  we 
have  had  our  schooling,  after  we  get  out- 
side of  it  —  which  may  indeed  be  getting 
within  it  —  getting  at  the  heart  of  its  per- 
plexing mysteries.  Certainly  the  vigor  of 
an  ever-fresh  immortality  will  not  let  itself 
be  wasted  in  idleness. 

'We  live  by  our  aspirations,  our  hopes  and 
affections  here ;  they  are  the  central  im- 
pulses of  our  being,  and  they  must  throb 
on  in  us  forever  ;  — 


124  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

"  All  before  us  lies  the  way  ; 

Give  the  past  unto  the  wind  ! 
All  before  us  is  the  day  ; 

Night  and  darkness  are  behind. 

"  Eden,  with  its  angels  bold, 

Love  and  flowers  and  coolest  sea, 
Is  less  an  ancient  story  told 
Than  a  growing  prophecy." 

But  we  must  hold  to  whatever  was  true 
in  the  story  of  the  past,  if  we  would  under- 
stand its  prophecy.  Our  Past,  our  Present, 
and  our  Future,  are  one  uninterrupted,  al- 
though ever  unfinished  history. 

There  is  not  one  real  thing  that  passes 
away  with  the  years.  Childhood  goes,  but 
the  child-heart  lives  on  and  reappears  with 
its  own  angelic  lineaments  beneath  new 
heavens.  The  bloom  of  youth  fades,  and 
its  strength  decays,  but  the  beautiful  soul 
has  been  growing  young  and  strong  out  of 
the  very  death  of  that  portion  of  its  exist- 
ence which  was  unenduring,  as  the  life  of 
the  tree  is  fed  by  its  own  fallen  leaves. 
We  cannot  climb  the  hills  in  age  as  we  did 


Forever  Young  125 

in  youth,  but  if  we  have  given  our  wings 
freedom  to  grow,  we  can  mount  up  as 
eagles  to  the  sky,  and  look  down  upon  the 
proud  summits  of  earth  as  molehills  be- 
neath us.  We  laugh  at  the  destructions  of 
time,  when  we  live  above  the  years. 

"  'T  is  always  morning  somewhere."  The 
sunset  is  but  a  traveling  sunrise.  The 
soul  is  swifter  than  the  sun.  Old  age  is  a 
sunset  and  a  sunrise  in  one.  If  we  follow 
with  unflagging  feet  the  highest  illumina- 
tion of  our  lives,  we  shall  have  within  us 
and  radiate  around  us  the  glory  of  a  per- 
petual dawn.  The  fountain  of  perennial 
youth  springs  up  in  the  heart  and  over- 
flows through  the  whole  being  of  those 
who  have  found  in  Christ  the  secret  of 
eternal  life. 

Though  we  are  to  lay  aside  —  though  we 
are  already  beginning  to  lay  aside  —  all  of 
the  body  that  can  decay,  we  are  to  live  on 
as  spirit-forms,  or  we  shall  not  be  our- 
selves. The  Resurrection  must  mean  the 
perfect  unfolding  of  whatever  shape  God's 


126  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

Spirit  within  us  was  breathing  us  into  here, 
as  separate  identities.  The  consciousness 
of  our  own  personality,  and  the  recogni- 
tion of  our  fellow-beings  as  persons,  are 
among  the  foundation-stones  of  our  thought 
of  immortality.  Our  whole  nature  cries 
out  against  any  other  suggestion  ;  — 

"  No  !     I  have  friends  in  Spirit-Land,  — 
Not  shadows  in  a  shadowy  band, 
Not  others,  but  themselves  are  they !  " 

We  shall  look  into  the  same  deep  eyes, 
and  clasp  the  same  warm  hands,  and  walk 
on  beside  the  same  beloved  beings  we  have 
known  here,  our^ransfigured  bodies  forever 
"young  with  the  youth  of  the  angels." 

To  repeat  some  strong  words  from  Dora 
Greenwell's  "  Two  Friends  :  " 

"  How  much  has  the  human  heart  gained 
in  the  one  revelation  which  enables  it  to 
say,  '  I  believe  in  the  resurrection  of  the 
body ; '  that  gives  the  flesh  also  leave  to 
'  rest  in  hope  ! ' 

"  It  is  this  belief  which  brings  with  it  all 
that  is  actual  and  personal  into  our  future 


Forever  Young  i2j 

life  ;  that  gives  us  back  our  friends,  look- 
ing and  talking  as  they  did  here  ;  gives  us 
back  our  feelings  and  occupations ;  in  fact, 
our  lives.  .  .  .  When  I  think  of  death,  it 
is  never  as  setting  the  soul  free  from  the 
body,  but  rather  as  admitting  it  into  a  state 
where  these  two,  in  the  marriage  of  the 
purified  soul  with  the  glorified  body,  will 
learn  the  true  blessedness  of  their  union, 
all  being  removed  that  has  sometimes  made 
it  irksome  and  constraining.  .  .  .  Man's 
heart  and  his  flesh  cry  out  for  the  living 
God :  they  claim  the  resurrection :  they 
ask  to  see  life  —  the  whole  of  life  —  bloom, 
as  a  flower,  according  to  the  fancy  of  the 
old  alchemists,  might  be  revived  from  its 
ashes." 

The  instinctive  prescience  of  the  human 
heart  regarding  a  personal  resurrection  is 
also  thus  eloquently  expressed  in  a  passage 
from  George  MacDonald's  "  Unspoken 
Sermons." 

"  Ah,  my  friends  !  What  will  resurrec- 
tion or  life  be  to  me,  how  shall  I  continue 


128  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

to  love  God  as  I  have  learned  to  love  Him 
through  you,  if  I  find  He  cares  so  little 
for  this  human  heart  of  mine  as  to  take 
from  me  the  gracious  visitings  of  your 
faces  and  forms  ?  .  .  .  No,  our  God  is  an 
unveiling,  a  revealing  God.  He  will  raise 
you  from  the  dead,  that  I  may  behold  you ; 
that  that  which  vanished  from  the  earth 
may  again  stand  forth,  looking  out  of  the 
same  eyes  of  eternal  love  and  truth,  hold- 
ing out  the  same  mighty  hand  of  brother- 
hood, the  same  delicate  and  gentle,  yet 
strong  hand,  of  sisterhood  to  me,  this  me 
that  knew  you  and  loved  you  in  the  days 
gone  by.  ...  I  shall  •  not  care  that  the 
matter  of  the  forms  I  loved  a  thousand 
years  ago  has  returned  to  mingle  with  the 
sacred  goings  on  of  God's  science,  upon 
that  far-off  world  wheeling  its  nursery  of 
growing  loves  and  wisdoms  through  space  ; 
I  shall  not  care,  so  long  as  it  is  you  your- 
selves that  are  before  me,  beloved  !  so  long 
as  through  these  forms  I  know  that  I  look 
on  my  own,  on   my  loving   souls    of   the 


Forever  Young  12Q 

ancient  time  ;  so  long  as  my  souls  have  got 
garments  of  revealing  after  their  own  old 
lovely  fashion,  garments  to  reveal  them- 
selves to  me.  The  new  shall  then  be  dear 
as  the  old,  and  for  the  same  reason,  that  it 
reveals  the  old  love. 

"  Lord,  evermore  give  us  this  Resurrec- 
tion, like  thine  own  in  the  body  of  Thy 
Transfiguration  !  Let  us  hear,  and  see,  and 
know,  and  be  seen,  and  heard,  and  known, 
as  Thou  seest,  hearest,  and  knowest ! 
Give  us  glorified  bodies  through  which  to 
reveal  the  glorified  thoughts  which  shalt 
then  inhabit  us,  when  not  only  shalt  Thou 
reveal  God,  but  each  of  us  shall  reveal 
Thee  !  " 


XI. 


An  Endless  Life. 

UR  human  vocabularies  are  pitifully- 
inadequate  to  the  utterance  of  any- 
heavenly  meaning.  We  have 
learned  from  them  to  think  of  eternity  as 
time  going  on  and  on  in  a  continuous 
groove,  like  a  railway  line,  far  indeed 
into  mysterious  distances,  our  one  idea 
of  it  being  its  endlessness.  But  life  is  not 
merely  a  lengthening,  invisible  thread ;  it 
is  a  power,  issuing  from  and  going  forth 
into  the  Infinite. 

To  live  is  to  have  a  place  and  a  share  in 
the  boundlessness  of  God's  creation.  He 
could  not  make  us  in  His  image  without 
making  us  immortal.  "  Indissoluble  "  is  the 
adjective  given  in  one  translation  of  the 
clause  "  the  power  of  an  endless  life  ; "  and 
immortality  is  life  indissoluble  from  God's. 


Aii  Endless  Life  1 31 

We,  becoming  kings  and  priests  unto 
God  by  entering  into  the  spirit  of  Christ, 
are  partners  in  His  power  and  inhabitants 
of  His  eternity.  We  can  say  to  the  Love 
that  at  once  shelters  and  liberates  us  — 

"  Thus  doth  Thy  hospitable  greatness  lie 
Around  us  like  a  boundless  sea: 
We  cannot  lose  ourselves  where  all  is  home, 
Nor  drift  away  from  Thee." 

Power  is  an  inseparable  quality  of   all 
great  life. 

"  To  be  weak  is  miserable." 

But  out  of  weakness  we  are  made  strong 
when  we  lose  ourselves  in  the  life  of  Him 
who  is  our  Strength.  Saint  John,  opening 
before  us  the  windows  of  his  celestial  vi- 
sion, lets  us  see,  now  "a  strong  angel,"  now 
"another  mighty  angel ; "  but  their  faces 
reveal  no  more  self-conscious  pride  than  is 
written  upon  the  brow  of  the  humblest 
messenger  of  God  on  earth.  His  power  is 
their  inspiration,  and  it  is  in  His  service 
that  they  have  grown  vigorous  and  great. 
They  visit  us  on  His  errands,  radiant  with 


132  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

His  health,  white-robed  with  His  righteous- 
ness. And  the  message  of  these  mighty 
ones  to  puny  mortals  is  this  :  that  they  also 
are  to  arise  and  clothe  themselves  with  the 
power  of  the  Infinite  God. 

"Then,  when  they  receive  Him,  a  new 
inspiration  is  upon  them  ;  all  their  powers 
are  exalted ;  a  wondrous  inconceivable 
energy  is  felt ;  and  having  come  into  the 
sense  of  God,  which  is  the  element  of  all 
real  greatness,  they  discover,  as  it  were  in 
amazement,  what  it  is  to  be  in  their  true 
capacity.  .  .  . 

"  These  angels  that  excel  in  strength, 
these  ancient  princes  and  hierarchs  that 
have  grown  up  in  God's  eternity  and  un- 
folded their  mighty  powers  in  whole  ages 
of  good,  recognize  in  us  compeers  that  are 
finally  to  be  advanced,  as  they  are." 

We  hear  men  to-day  asking  themselves 
and  each  other  whether  they  believe  in 
immortality,  while  the  power  of  an  endless 
life  is  pressing  all  around  and  into  them,  a 
spiritual  atmosphere.     A  man  may  be  liv- 


An  Endless  Life  m  '    1 33 

ing  immortally  without  knowing  it ;  which 
is  far  better  than  for  him  to  assert  his  im- 
mortality without  living  it.  Few  of  us  can 
abide  contentedly  in  our  own  littleness. 
The  soul  feels  keenly  her  mortal  limita- 
tions of  outward  circumstance  and  inward 
defect  :  she  longs  to  escape  from  herself 
into  God. 

"Although  we  live  petty  and  foolish 
lives,  the  knowledge  that  there  is  greatness 
and  wisdom,  the  knowledge  that  there  is 
God,  is  a  far  greater  and  more  constant 
consolation  to  us  than  we  know."  It  is  a 
consolation,  because  it  is  an  ever-present 
hope  of  release.  It  is  impossible  that  one 
who  loves  God,  —  wholly  impossible  that 
one  who  loves  Him  in  Christ,  should  be 
habitually  narrow  and  petty  and  mean 
in  his  relations  to  others.  To  love  Him  is 
to  share  His  life,  to  enter  into  the  infinite- 
ness  of  His  love  and  power.  When  we 
are  filled  with  all  the  fullness  of  God,  we 
cannot  help  overflowing  with  it  towards 
our  fellow-beings.  In  giving  ourselves,  we 
give  Him  ;  for  we  have  no  life  but  His. 


1 34  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

How  can  we  stay  shut  up  to  our  own 
little  planning  and  scheming,  when  the 
ocean-currents  of  God's  being  are  pressing 
in  to  flood  us  with  His  eternity  ?  How  can 
we  be  so  little,  when  we  were  meant  to  be 
so  great  ?  How  can  we  help  calling  to  our 
neighbors  who  are  stifling  in  their  airless 
pinfolds,  "Come  out  and  float  upon  the 
seas  of  eternity  !  come,  feel  how  great  you 
are,  how  great  the  world  is,  how  great  and 
glorious  is  the  God  to  whom  you  belong ! 
Come  and  let  us  breathe  together  the  full 
freedom  of  the  infinite  Life, — the  life  of 
Love,  of  truth,  and  of  holiness,  —  and  so 
be  immortal  together  !  " 

And  escaping  out  of  ourselves,  we  leave 
our  doors  wide  open  to  God.  He  enters 
into  us,  and  makes  a  heaven  of  our  souls. 
Every  thought,  every  emotion  glows  and 
expands  in  His  Presence.  Now,  for  the 
first  time,  we  learn  what  we  are,  and  what 
we  may  become.     We  feel 

"  The  rapture  mighty,  measureless, 
In  each  eternal  thing  ;  — 


An  Endless  Life  i  55 

The  mingling  with  Almightiness ; 
The  duelling  by  Life's  spring." 

It  is  too  true  that  circumstances  are  some- 
times our  unpitying  jailors.  We  feel  our- 
selves dwindling  in  our  cells,  with  scarcely 
strength  left  to  aspire  towards  freedom.  — 
Room  !  room  to  breathe  in,  room  to  rest 
our  cramped  powers  by  putting  them  to 
noble  uses  !  —  is  the  piteous  cry  of  many  an 
unwilling  prisoner,  —  a  cry  more  appealing 
than  even  the  wail  of  poverty. 

"  All  tortured  states 
Suppose  a  straitened  place.     Jehovah,  Lord, 
Make  room  for  rest  around  me  !  out  of  sight 
Now  float  me,  of  the  vexing  land  abherred, 
Till  in  deep  calms  of  space  my  soul  may  right 
Her  nature,  shoot  large  sail  on  lengthening  cord, 
And  rush  exultant  on  the  Infinite." 

But  the  circumscribed  lot  is  not  necessa- 
rily ignoble,  nor  the  trivial  duty  mean. 
The  only  really  small  life  is  that  which 
shuts  God  out  ;  and  there  is  no  life  so  nar- 
row or  so  low  that*  its  doors  may  not  open 
to  the  inflowing  grandeur  of  His  Being. 
Yet  sometimes  we  must  wholly  break  down 


i^b  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

the  walls  of  our  imprisoning  self-content, 
and  go  forth,  unsheltered  wanderers,  to 
seek  Him  in  the  wilderness.  And  truly 
seeking  Him,  there  or  anywhere,  we  shall 
find  Him.  Our  dissatisfaction  with  our- 
selves is  a  proof  that  we  belong  to  Him. 
Says  an  old  writer  :  "  In  this  is  the  excel- 
lency of  man,  that  he  is  made  capable  of  a 
communion  with  his  Maker,  and,  because 
capable  of  it,  is  unsatisfied  without  it ;  the 
soul,  being  cut  out  to  that  largeness,  can- 
not be  satisfied  with  less." 

Without  a  sense  of  the  Infinite,  we  never 
come  to  a  just  knowledge  of  our  own  pow- 
ers. The  reason  why  our  lives  are  so  frag- 
mentary and  meaningless  is  that  we  live 
them  as  if  they  were  our  own  lives  only, 
and  do  not  centre  them  in  God.  We  must 
unite  ourselves  to  the  Greatest,  if  we  would 
live  in  any  great  or  glorious  way.  In 
union  with  the  Strongest  is  our  strength. 
By  ourselves  we  are  but  units.  In  God  we 
come  into  unity,  into  oneness  with  the 
Whole.      The    deepest    prayer    a   human 


An  Endless  Life  137 

being  can  breathe  was  uttered  by  the 
Psalmist  centuries  ago  :  "  O  knit  my 
heart  unto  Thee  !  "  The  life  that  is  knit 
to  the  Perfect,  the  Divine  Life,  however  lit- 
tle it  may  be,  is  coherent  and  strong,  and 
immortal.  We  can  only  know  what  eter- 
nity is,  —  what  heaven  is,  —  through  the 
power  of  a  life  indissoluble  from  God's  :  — 

"  God's  glory  passing  into  thee,  — 
All  heaven  becoming  thine  !  " 

The  endless  life  implies  for  us  the  inim- 
itably unaccomplished.  More  and  greater 
attainments  will  always  be  awaiting  us,  for 
beyond  us  He  will  be  forever.  "  Let  us 
climb  to  the  height  of  our  Alpine  desires  ; 
let  us  leave  them  behind  us  and  ascend  the 
spear-pointed  Himalayas  of  our  aspirations  ; 
still  shall  we  find  the  depth  of  God's  sap- 
phire above  us  ;  still  shall  we  find  the 
heavens  higher  than  the  earth,  and  His 
thoughts  and  His  ways  higher  than  our 
thoughts  and  our  ways." 

Vistas  and  labyrinths  of  knowledge  reach 
on  before  us.    We  cannot  endure  our  igno- 


i}8  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

ranee,  and  are  impatient  to  penetrate  the 
hidden  mysteries  of  the  universe.  But  it 
is  from  the  alphabet  we  learn  here  that  we 
are  to  spell  out  lessons  of  eternal  truth  un- 
der heavenly  teachers.  We  shall  drop  off 
our  silly  pedantries  as  we  catch  the  charm 
of  their  holy  simplicity,  and  shall  become 
wiser  as  we  become  more  childlike.  "  Know- 
ledge is  power,"  we  have  been  taught  to 
say  ;  but  as  we  go  on,  we  shall  change  the 
proverb  to  "  Wisdom  is  power  ;  "  for  wis- 
dom is  knowledge  illumined  by  love  — 
knowledge  that  has  found  her  soul. 

Earth  is  a  school-room  ;  and  heaven  will 
be  a  school-room  also  for  us  who,  through 
all  eternity,  must  aspire  to  know  more  of 
God,  and  to  penetrate  truth  which  is  ever 
deepening  into  the  impenetrable.  When 
we  learn  as  they  do  in  heaven,  we  shall 
learn  not  merely  "for  knowing's  sake,"  not 
from  curiosity  or  pride  of  acquisition,  but 
for  love ;  for  the  sake  of  giving  what  we 
have  received.  We  can  never  comprehend 
the  Infinite  Love  except  through  loving 


An  Endless  Life  i  }cj 

infinitely.  Wc  are  only  then  aware  of  our 
own  greatness,  when  we  feel  the  Divine 
Life  flowing  through  ours. 

"  Human  greatness,"  it  has  been  said, 
"must  be  ultimately  reducible  to  this:  a 
quality  in  any  man  by  which  he  is  capable 
first  of  taking  into  himself,  and  then  of  dis- 
tributing through  himself  to  others,  some 
part  of  the  life  of  God." 

This,  then,  is  the  grandeur  of  living,  the 
power  of  our  immortality,  "  the  power  of 
an  endless  life,"  to  receive  and  radiate  the 
life  of  God.  Translated  into  the  one  great 
human  Word,  Christ,  God  revealed  and 
given  to  man  in  His  Son,  it  means  sacrifice, 
the  utter  sacrifice  of  self  for  humanity's 
need.  To  know  Him,  through  sharing  in 
the  spirit  of  His  sacrifice,  is  to  have  en- 
tered into  eternal  life.  We  count  our  lives 
no  longer  by  minutes  and  seconds,  by  days 
and  years  and  aeons,  but  by  His  infinite 
heart-throbs,  pulsating  through  every  fibre 
of  our  being,  and  so  keeping  the  world 
warm  for  its  desolate  and  wandering  chil- 


140  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

dren,  our  Father's  family,  for  whom  He 
lived  and  died.  In  Christ  we  are  alive 
from  the  dead  forevermore.  In  Him  there 
is  no  death.  The  one  true  satisfaction  of 
our  souls,  on  earth  or  in  heaven,  is  the 
awaking  ever  more  and  more  perfectly  into 
His  likeness. 

A  good  man  has  bidden  us  not  to  think 
of  death  as  a  sleep,  but  as  a  waking  from 
sleep.  "And,"  he  says,  "I  do  not  know 
that  death  will  be  our  last  waking.  I  do 
not  know  but  we  may  have  deeper  senses 
yet,  which  death  may  not  touch  and  open. 
Perhaps  we  may  have  ranges  of  faculties, 
one  within  another,  each  with  its  own 
world  and  modes  of  being,  so  that  we  may 
keep  waking  up,  stage  after  stage,  to 
brighter  realms,  for  ever  and  ever  away  to- 
wards God,  the  central  life  and  glory  of  all. 
Who  shall  say  that  we  may  not  to  all  eter- 
nity, at  some  of  its  stages,  die  to  a  more 
outward  life  and  wake  up  to  a  more  inward 
and  real  one  ?  that  after  we  have  lived  out 
the  life  of  one  world  faithfully,  a  new  one 


An  Endless  Life  141 

will  open  more  brightly  and  objectively, 
where  there  is  a  higher  order  of  existence, 
and  God  reveals  Himself  in  diviner  splen- 
dor—  all  coming  from  the  successive 
waking  up  into  intenser  life  of  faculties 
that  sleep  already  within  us  ?  " 

A  glorious  conjecture,  perhaps  a  pro- 
phecy. "  It  doth  not  yet  appear  what  we 
shall  be."     But  this  is  a  certainty  :  that 

"  There  is  no  death  to  those  who  know  of  Life,"  — 

the  endless,  limitless  life  of  love  and  power 
wherein  man  is  indissolubly  one  with  God. 


XII. 


The  Joy  of  our  Lord. 

N  the  parable  of  the  talents,  the 
reward  of  the  faithful  servant  was 
not  a  gift  for  himself,  but  the 
opportunity  to  do  something  for  his  Lord, 
something  more  and  better  than  he  had 
ever  done  before.  And  the  best  reward 
for  any  faithful  work  is  the  privilege  of 
going  on  and  proving  our  faithfulness  with 
more  difficult  tasks.  The  servant  likes  to 
feel  that  he  can  trust  himself  even  as  he  is 
trusted.  And  he  becomes  a  stronger  man 
for  his  loyalty  to  his  master  and  to  himself. 
"  The  faculty  of  doing  good,"  it  has  been 
said,  "  by  an  eternal  law,  is  multiplied  and 
magnified  according  to  the  use  which  is 
made  of  it."  Here,  again,  the  grandeur  of 
our  destiny  is  suggested  by  our  possibili- 
ties of  development  in  noble  personal 
character. 


The  Joy  of  our  Lord  143 

The  happiest  thing  that  can  befall  us  is 
to  have  work  given  us  that  requires  us  to 
be  true  to  ourselves,  and  that  will  count  in 
large  benefits  to  others.  \  There  is  little 
pleasure  in  a  daily  routine  of  toil  which 
could  be  performed  just  as  well  by  anybody 
else*  but  there  is  abundant  happiness  in 
taking  up  tasks  for  which  we  have  pre- 
pared ourselves,  and  which  perhaps  would 
never  be  as  well  done  by  another.  In  other 
words,  it  is  a  great  privilege  to  find  our 
own  work,  and  to  get  leave  to  do  it.  It 
may  be  that  this  will  be  one  of  the  satis- 
factions of  the  future  life.  <  We  all  have  to 
do  so  many  things  that  fret  and  irritate  us 
here,  it  sometimes  seeir>6  to  us  as  if  con- 
genial work  would  be  heaven. 

And  we  cannot  think  that  heaven  means 
anything  less  than  service.  The  sky  above 
us  might  show  us  this  ;  that  which  is 
"  heaved  up  "  over  the  clods  we  tread  upon, 
with  its  wonderful  mediations  of  cloud  and 
sunshine,  of  rainbow  and  lightning  and 
storm   and    dew.      The    air   around   us   is 


144  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

never  at  rest,  but  is  constantly  astir  with 
the  preparation  of  some  new  blessing  for 
us.  And  earth  takes  the  thought  of  the 
heavens  into  her  bosom,  and  reproduces  it 
in  living  plants  and  flowing  streams,  and 
tender  green  grass.  All  things  God  has 
made  beautiful  He  has  made  for  service 
also. 

Our  Lord  has  told  us  that  His  Father's 
life  and  His  are,  from  the  beginning,  one 
unintermitting,  infinite  work.  He  came  to 
us,  "  not  to  be  ministered  unto,  but  to  min- 
ister." Did  that  ministry  end  when  He 
cried  out  on  the  cross,  "  It  is  finished "  ? 
Have  apostles  and  martyrs  and  all  holy 
men  and  women-  down  to  our  own  time 
been  doing  merely  a  work  of  their  own, 
or  is  it  He  himself,  His  Spirit  in  them, 
who  has  accomplished  all  good  that  is  done 
in  the  world  until  now  ?  If  we  believe  in 
a  living  Christ,  "  the  Son  of  Man  who  is 
in  heaven,"  we  must  believe  that  He  is  still 
giving  His  loving  service  to  the  beings 
for  whom  He  lived  and  died  on  earth  ;  a 


The  Joy  of  our  Lord  145 

service  inconceivably  more  glorious  because 
it  is  now  wholly  a  spiritual  work. 

His  work  was  begun  at  the  beginning  of 
creation.  He  is  "  the  Lamb  that  was  slain 
from  the  foundation  of  the  world."  His 
life  and  death  with  us  and  for  us  were  only 
such  a  glimpse  of  His  eternal  being  and 
divine  activity  as  could  be  made  visible  to 
our  human  eyes  ;  only  a  segment  of  the  in- 
finite circle  of  His  God-life.  That  work 
cannot  be  ended  until  heaven  and  earth 
shall  pass  away,  until  man  no  longer 
needs  God :  nay,  we  may  say  reverently, 
until  God  and  man  no  longer  need  each 
other. 

The  life  beyond  the  grave  would  be  a 
blank  to  us,  except  for  the  hope  of  enter- 
ing into  ministries  of  love  like  His,  with 
Him.  We  who  have  been  of  so  little  use 
to  others  here,  we  who  have  felt  our- 
selves so  hampered  and  hindered  in  our 
sincerest  efforts  by  circumstances  and  by 
our  own  imperfections  and  mistakes,  we 
should  almost  feel  as  if  the  future  life  were 


146  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

going  to  be  a  failure,  if  we  could  not 'help 
our  fellow-beings  there  more  than  we  have 
helped  them  here.  If  the  lesson  of  life  is 
love,  love  like  Christ's,  we  know  that  we 
have  hardly  begun  to  learn  it  yet. 

We  are  not  left  in  doubt.  "  His  servants 
shall  serve  Him,"  is  foretold  concerning 
the  glorified  inhabitants  of  the  Holy  City. 
And  how  can  they  serve  Him  so  well  as  by 
helping  their  brethren  and  His  ?  "  His 
name  shall  be  in  their  foreheads."  His 
name  is  "The  Saviour;"  and  they  who 
bear  His  name  are  to  be  saviours  and  help- 
ers also. 

Though  we  may  hereafter  come  to  re- 
gions in  the  spiritual  world  where  there  is 
no  more  sin,  there  will  always  be  different 
grades  of  being,  different  degrees  of  devel- 
opment, the  need  of  the  lower  to  learn 
from  the  higher,  and  the  higher  from  the 
lower  as  well.  Can  any  of  us  imagine  our- 
selves in  a  possible  future  condition  or  sit- 
uation where  we  shall  no  longer  need  the 
suggestions  of  friendship,  the  guidance  of 


The  Joy  of  our  Lord  147 

greater  natures  than  ours,  the  aid  of  loving 
human  souls  like  our  own  ?  No  :  even  in 
heaven  we  shall  have  our  mutual  needs. 
There,  as  here,  we  shall  reach  out  for  the 
strong  hand  of  brotherly  help  in  ascending 
to  spiritual  heights. 

In  shutting  none  out  of  our  sympathy, 
in  the  willingness  to  help  all  and  to  be 
helped  by  all,  we  are  here  beginning,  like 
children,  to  climb  the  foothills  that  lead  us 
upward  to  immortality  ;  we  already  breathe 
joyfully  the  air  of  the  unseen  kingdom.  It 
is  folly  for  us  to  think  that  we  shall  be  at 
home  in  heaven,  if  we  find  its  air  too  pure 
for  our  breathing  here.  The  self-absorbed, 
the  unsympathetic,  the  unloving,  have  lost 
their  way,  and  are  on  the  downward  path. 
No  light  of  the  eternal  life  is  reflected  from 
their  faces.  But  when,  at  last,  we  shall 
have  cast  aside  the  worn-out  rags  of  our 
selfishness,  and,  turning  our  eyes  and  our 
feet  upward,  are  clothed  upon  and  winged 
with  love,  on  the  heavenly  heights,  who 
shall  guess  to  what  new  meanings  sympa- 


148  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

thy  and  comradeship  and  helpfulness  may 
grow  ?  These  are  the  things  which  it  hath 
not  entered  into  the  heart  of  man  to  con- 
ceive. 

Yes,  service  is  the  law  of  the  heavenly 
life,  and  heartily  entering  into  it,  we  enter 
into  joy,  — the  joy  of  our  Lord. 

To  enter  into  His  joy  !  It  means  free- 
dom and  shelter,  and  communion.  It  in- 
cludes all  the  hospitalities  of  earth  and  of 
heaven.  To  be  welcomed  into  every  room 
in  our  Father's  house,  — to  blend  our  life  as 
music  with  the  harmonies  of  His  universe, 
—  to  be  at  peace  forever,  forever  at  one 
with  the  onward  movement  of  His  holy 
and  glorious  Will !  To  feel  ourselves  each  a 
part  of  the  vast  unity  of  things  visible  and 
invisible, — to  be  permitted  to  do  some- 
thing towards  drawing  all  things  together 
in  Him,  —  to  help  Him  in  shaping  the 
new  heaven  and  the  new  earth,  —  to  know 
that  nothing  exists  that  is  not  an  element 
of  His  joy  and  ours !  This  it  is  to  be  at 
home  in  the  New  Jerusalem  —  "  built  as  a 
city  that  is  at  unity  in  itself." 


The  Joy  of  oar  Lord  149 

It  is  the  joy  of  our  Lord. 

Not  man  only,  but  the  whole  created  uni- 
verse, through  every  nerve  and  tissue  of 
its  life,  will  blend  itself  in  the  chorus  of 
the  new  song.  Nature  will  be  at  one  with 
us,  as  we  are  at  one  with  God.  Blind  and 
dumb  as  she  seems  now,  she  will  share  with 
us  in  the  clear  vision  and  the  overflowing 
praise.  Like  the  beasts  in  the  Apocalypse, 
"full  of  eyes  within,"  she  will  join  with 
worshiping  saints  and  elders  and  angels 
round  about  the  Throne,  in  gratitude  to 
Him  who  has  found  nothing  that  his  Fa- 
ther created  too  mean  for  Him  to  redeem. 

"  And  every  creature  which  is  in  heaven 
and  on  the  earth,  and  under  the  earth,  and 
such  as  are  in  the  sea,  and  all  that  are  in 
them,  heard  I  saying,  Blessing,  and  honor, 
and  glory,  and  power,  be  unto  him  that  sit- 
teth  upon  the  throne,  and  unto  the  Lamb 
forever  and  ever." 

In  saying  "our  Lord,"  "our  brethren," 
"our  world,"  we  take  in  nothing  less  than 
the    whole.      Imperfect,    incoherent,   dis- 


150  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

jointed  without  Him,  the  whole  body  is 
"complete  in  Him." 

A  child  of  God  who  is  not  glad  in  simply- 
being  alive,  and  in  doing  the  work  He  has 
appointed,  is  an  anomaly.  It  is  as  if  a  sun- 
beam should  frown  back  upon  the  sun  for 
sending  it  forth  to  illumine  the  world ;  or 
as  if  a  color  in  the  rainbow  should  darken 
and  grow  dim  because  it  must  take  its 
place  in  building  the  heavenly  arch.  Joy 
is  the  smile  of  Being;  the  natural  expres- 
sion of  the  soul's  delight  in  receiving  and 
giving.  Pleasure,  delight,  happiness,  these 
are  all  shallow  experiences,  in  comparison 
with  joy.  They  stir  us  at  the  surface : 
this  is  an  elemental  quality,  welling  up 
from  the  abysses  of  the  soul. 

"Your  joy  no  man  taketh  from  you," 
Christ  said  to  his  disciples  ;  and  He  was 
speaking  of  the  greatest  sorrow  of  their 
lives,  which  was  yet  to  reveal  itself  to 
them  as  a  joy.  "  These  things  I  speak, 
that  they  might  have  my  joy  fulfilled  in 
themselves."    His  joy  was  the  sacrifice  He 


The  Joy  of  our  Lord  151 

was  making  of  himself ;  and  theirs  was  to 
come  through  entering  in  to  the  spirit  of 
His  sacrifice  when  He  should  have  gone 
out  of  their  sight. 

The  simple  gladnesses  of  life  Christ  also 
shared  as  naturally  as  we  may  share  them. 
The  fields  of  His  native  land  bloom-ed  for 
none  so  sweetly  as  for  Him  whose  creative 
vision  discerned  all  that  there  was 

"  Of  splendor  in  the  grass,  of  glory  in  the  flower." 

He  loved  little  children  ;  watched  them 
at  their  innocent  sports,  took  them  in  His 
arms  and  blessed  them,  and  was  happy  in 
their  happiness.  The  peace  of  home-life 
sank  into  His  heart ;  and  He  welcomed 
the  sweetness  of  love  from  stranger  or  from 
friend,  with  gracious  and  sympathetic  glad- 
ness. His  Father's  world  was  all  a  delight 
to  Him  :  but  His  joy  of  joys  was  that  He 
could  save  its  ungrateful  souls  from  the 
sorrow  of  their  sins  by  the  gift  of  Himself. 
To  enter  into  this  deepest  joy  of  His  is  to 
enter  heaven. 


152  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

The  souls  that  walk  white-robed  there, 
are  the  souls  of  those  who,  with  Him,  have 
laid  down  their  lives  for  the  saving  of  other 
lives.  So  are  their  garments  washed  white 
in  the  blood  of  the  Lamb.  And  in  the 
spirit  of  that  sacrifice  they  go  on,  from 
glory  to  glory.  They  cannot  cease  from 
giving  themselves  ;  it  has  become  the  habit 
of  their  entire  being.  They  are  full  of  the 
light  of  their  Lord's  love,  and  they  must 
forever  radiate  His  blessedness.  Wher- 
ever they  are  needed  in  His  universe,  they 
go  forth,  swifter  than  sunbeams,  on  His 
errands.  To  be  with  Him  in  His  heaven, 
is  not  only  to  have  lost  all  selfishness, 
but  to  know  no  joy  in  life  except  in  giving 
that  life  forth  continually  to  others. 

"  I  looked,  •  and  behold,  a  door  was 
opened  in  heaven."  A  door,  —  swinging 
back  on  musical  hinges  before  the  dis- 
couraged wanderers  of  earth,  inviting  them 
to  hospitalities  glimpsed  beyond,  inconceiv- 
able to  the  heart  of  man.  A  door  ?  Those 
are   not    unfolding   portals,   they   are  out- 


The  Joy  of  our  Lord  153 

spread  arms,  and  above  them  is  the  glory 
of  a  Face,  and  from  within  there  floats  the 
tenderness  of  a  Voice, — 

"  I  am  the  Door  I  " 

It  is  He,  the  Lord  of  Life  Himself  :  and 
we,  who  were  so  weary  of  our  vain  efforts 
to  conquer  the  evil,  the  pettiness  and  un- 
lovingness  of  our  natures,  are  uplifted,  up- 
borne to  His  heart,  and  its  mighty  throb- 
bings  become  the  inspiration  of  our  own. 
He  does  for  us  what  we  could  not  do  for 
ourselves,  and  we  are  saved.  Henceforth 
there  is  no  life  for  us  but  His. 

"  I  have  set  before  thee  an  open  door, 
and  no  man  can  shut  it."  To  every  soul 
of  man  this  message  comes,  and  the  soul 
that  turns  at  the  call  of  the  angel  who 
brings  it,  will  bear  witness  that  the  message 
is  true.  Only  we  ourselves  can  shut  our- 
selves out  of  heaven.  The  door  of  a 
Heart  as  human  in  its  sympathy  as  it  is 
divine  in  its  love  and  power,  stands  always 
open  and  waiting  with  welcome  for  the  re- 
pentant child  who  would  fain  return  to  his 
Father's  house. 


1 54  ds  it  is  in  Heaven 

"  By  me  if  any  man  enter  in,  he  shall  be 
saved,  and  shall  go  in  and  out,  and  find 
pasture." 

"  He  shall  go  in  and  out."  The  children 
of  the  kingdom  have  the  freedom  of  the 
universe.  No  narrow  enclosure  shuts  them 
away  from  their  brethren  of  distant  ages 
and  different  faiths  and  races.  To  them 
none  are  strangers  and  foreigners.  They 
are  at  home  with  all  the  inhabitants  of 
earth  and  of  heaven.  They  do  not  know 
each  other  as  Greek  or  Barbarian,  as  Jew 
or  Gentile,  as  mortal  or  angel,  but  as  the 
children  of  God. 

They  may  rest  beside  the  still  waters  of 
human  affection,  and  they  may  climb  the 
loftiest  heights  of  knowledge  and  specula- 
tion. They  may  laugh  with  the  child  and 
think  with  the  philosopher.  Theirs  are  the 
poet's  songs  ;  and  theirs  the  discoveries  of 
the  man  of  science.  They  sing  with  the 
woman  at  her  wheel,  or  whistle  with  the 
farmer  at  his  plow,  and  they  catch  from  that 
healthy  mirth  a  note  of  reverent  praise  that 


The  Joy  of  our  Lord  1 55 

they  carry  up  to  heaven  and  blend  with 
the  chant  of  the  seraphim.  Unlike  the 
dwellers  in  the  elder  Paradise,  they  have 
right  to  all  fruits  that  grow  on  the  tree  of 
knowledge  or  the  tree  of  life.  Nothing  is 
forbidden  to  them,  for  they  want  nothing 
that  God  does  not  desire  them  to  possess. 
They  have  entered  into  life  by  the  one  only 
Way,  through  the  heart  and  mind  and  soul 
of  Christ.  Overcoming  their  sins  in  His 
strength,  and  becoming  one  with  Him  in 
love  and  purity  and  righteousness,  they 
"  inherit  all  things,"  both  in  this  world 
and  in  the  world  to  come. 

We  have  as  yet  only  partially  come  into 
possession  of  our  earthly  inheritance.  Our 
own  bodies  and  souls  are  still  a  mystery 
to  us.  Nature  sometimes  seems  to  inveigle 
us  into  inextricable  entanglements.  Our 
fellow-beings  often  appear  strange,  distant, 
and  unrelated ;  and  our  future  is  hidden 
from  us  by  an  impenetrable  veil.  Yet  all 
these  things  belong  to  us,  and  to  all  these 
we  belong.     As  we  enter  into  life,  we  shall 


156  As  it  is  in  Heaven 

comprehend  more  and  more  joyfully  the 
truth  that  all  things  are  ours,  because  in 
Christ  we  are  one  with  all. 

We  shall  never  inclose  the  Infinite  with- 
in our  finite  grasp,  but  we  shall  lay  hold 
upon  it  more  and  more  firmly  as  we  go  on. 
The  Infinite  One  must  draw  us  onward 
towards  Himself  forever.  The  beauty  and 
the  glory  of  the  immortal  life  is  that  it 
is  an  eternal  entering  in.  Ever  shall  we 
be  penetrating  into  new  mysteries,  ever 
aroused  by  nobler  enthusiasms  to  loftier 
undertakings,  ever  enfolded  by  purer  affec- 
tions, ever  forming  holier  alliances,  ever 
taken  deeper  and  deeper  into  the  heart  of 
Christ,  into  the  fathomless  abysses  of  the 
love  of  God  ! 

As  it  is  in  heaven,  so  may  it  now  begin 
to  be  on  earth  !  O  soul,  be  faithful  in  thy 
few  things,  and  He  will  make  thee  ruler 
over  many  things  !  "  Enter  thou  into  the 
joy  of  thy  Lord  !  " 


DATE  DUE 

r*i»f*1    2   1 

374 

OEC  *•  *  l 

HGD  SEP 

l  a  I974 

BPU  OC" 

■    11986 

PRINTEO  IN  US 


iifiliiiiiHiiiiS'SiiM1  LIBRARV  FACILITY 

AA    000  663  241    8 


UC   IRVINE   LIBRARIES 


3   1970  02140   5235 


